Jitter Radiation as an Alternative Mechanism for the Nonthermal X-Ray Emission of Cassiopeia A

Abstract

Synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons is usually invoked as responsible for the nonthermal emission observed in supernova remnants. Diffusive shock acceleration is the most popular mechanism to explain the process of particles acceleration and within its framework a crucial role is played by the turbulent magnetic field. However, the standard models commonly used to fit X-ray synchrotron emission do not take into account the effects of turbulence in the shape of the resulting photon spectra. An alternative mechanism that properly includes such effects is the jitter radiation, which provides for an additional power law beyond the classical synchrotron cutoff. We fitted a jitter spectral model to Chandra, NuSTAR, SWIFT/BAT, and INTEGRAL/ISGRI spectra of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and found that it describes the X-ray soft-to-hard range better than any of the standard cutoff models. The jitter radiation allows us to measure the index of the magnetic turbulence spectrum ν _B and the minimum scale of the turbulence ${\lambda }_{\min }$ across several regions of Cas A, with best-fit values ν _B ∼ 2 − 2.4 and ${\lambda }_{\min }\lesssim 100$ km.

Keywords

• High-energy cosmic radiation
• Galactic cosmic rays
• X-ray astronomy
• Supernova remnants
• Particle astrophysics
• Shocks