2023-11-22 15:00  P7F Seminar Room

[Journal Club] Highly polarized X-ray emission from SN 1006

Dr. Dmitry Prokhorov

 The importance of synchrotron radiation for cosmic sources was understood in the 1950s. The polarization of radiation is a key characteristic of the synchrotron mechanism. However, the question whether the polarized emission can be observed from supernova remnants had been initially debated, since turbulent magnetic fields can lead to non-polarized emission. Observations of X-ray polarization probe a magnetic-field structure near shock fronts and reply to the question how turbulent a magnetic field is at the shocks. After 50 years of waiting for a new instrument, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) was launch in December 2021. In this talk, I will present the results of IXPE observations of SN 1006, which demonstrate the imaging capabilities of IXPE.