# 8.1.7. Supernova remnant model theory¶

For the calculation of SNR models we follow Kaastra & Jansen (1993). But also here we make some modifications in the implementation.

The X-ray spectrum of a SNR is characterised in lowest order by its average temperature , ionisation parameter and emission measure . If one calculates a specific model however, these average values are not known a priori. A relevant set of input parameters could be the interstellar density, the shock radius and the explosion energy. These are the parameters used by KJ. A disadvantage is that this choice is not suitable for spectral fitting: changing one of the parameters gives correlated changes in , and , which is an undesirable feature in spectral fitting. KJ solved this by inputting a guess of , , and and using these guess parameters as the fitting parameters. After fitting, the model had to be calculated another time in order to find the relation between guessed and true parameters. here we take another choice. We will select input parameters which scale with , and respectively but are connected to the SNR parameters independent of the hydrodynamical model. The first parameter is the shock temperature

the second the shock ionisation parameter defined by

where is the electron density before the shock (for a completely ionised gas), and the age of the remnant. Further we define the shock reduced emission measure by

where is the main shock radius, and the distance to the source. We have introduced here also the electron density instead of the more natural Hydrogen density, because this allows an efficient use of the model for spectral fitting: if one fits a spectrum with variable chemical abundances, then using the current scaling we need to calculate (for a given , and ) the relative ion concentrations only once; for other abundances, the relative concentrations may be simply scaled without a need to redo completely the ionisation balance calculations. Finally we introduced the distance in the definition of in order to allow an easy comparison with spectra observed at earth. These 3 input parameters , and will serve as input parameters for all hydrodynamical models. They are linked to other parameters as follows:

(1)

where is a dimensionless factor representing the average mass in units of a proton mass per Hydrogen atom ( with the proton mass), and is another dimensionless factor, representing the ratio of electron plus ion density over the Hydrogen density. Further, is a model-dependent dimensionless scaling factor which is given by

with the velocity scaling discussed below and the density jump at the main shock front, which depends upon the Hydrodynamical model. Another scaling law links the gas velocity to the temperature:

with the post-shock gas velocity (not to be confused with the shock velocity!). The velocity scaling factor is given by

with the understatement that for the Sedov and Solinger model one should take formally the limit .

The explosion energy is linked to the other parameters by

where is the dimensionless energy integral introduced by Sedov. The value of depends both upon the hydrodynamical model and the value for and , the density gradient scale heights of the interstellar medium and the stellar ejecta.

If we express in keV, in  s, in  , in units of  m, in  , in units of  m and in s, we obtain from (1) the value for the proton mass of =  ( ). Using this value and defining , the scaling laws for SNRs may be written as

where is the mass integral, and is the dimensionless mass integral (defined by ).