Far-Infrared Emission from a Late Supernova Remnant in an Inhomogeneous Medium

Abstract

Interstellar dust particles are swept up during the expansion of a supernova (SN) remnant, penetrate behind the shock wave front, where they are heated and destroyed in the hot gas. This leads to a change in the emission properties of such particles. The paper considers the evolution of the infrared (IR) luminosity of an SN remnant expanding in an inhomogeneous interstellar medium with a lognormal distribution of density perturbations. The IR luminosity of the swept up interstellar dust increases rapidly during the first few thousand years after the SN explosion and reaches a maximum. It then decreases due to the destruction of particles in the hot gas and a drop in their emissivity in the cooling gas of the shell. The dependence of the evolution of the IR luminosity of the dust in the remnant on the gas density dispersion ahead of the shock wave front from the SN is shown. It was found that the band centered at 70 \(\mu\)m can be considered as the most optimal for studying late remnants, since the maximum IR luminosity is located within its limits for a significant time (40–50 kyr). During the evolution, the dust temperature changes from 70 to 20 K and weakly depends on the level of inhomogeneity of the medium. During the radiative phase, strong lines of metal ions appear in the remnant spectra against the dust continuum. Their luminosity grows rapidly and exceeds the luminosity of dust in the continuum under the line by approximately 10–10\({}^{3}\) times. The moment of achieving high luminosity in the lines depends significantly on the inhomogeneity of the medium. The possibilities of observing IR emission both in the dust continuum and in the lines are discussed. It is expected that their ratios will allow us to estimate the magnitude of inhomogeneity of the medium in which the remnant is expanding.