0000000000550375
AUTHOR
Andrew R. Siegel
Crushing of interstellar gas clouds in supernova remnants. I. The role of thermal conduction and radiative losses
We model the hydrodynamic interaction of a shock wave of an evolved supernova remnant with a small interstellar gas cloud like the ones observed in the Cygnus loop and in the Vela SNR. We investigate the interplay between radiative cooling and thermal conduction during cloud evolution and their effect on the mass and energy exchange between the cloud and the surrounding medium. Through the study of two cases characterized by different Mach numbers of the primary shock (M = 30 and 50, corresponding to a post-shock temperature $T\approx 1.7\times 10^6$ K and $\approx 4.7\times 10^6$ K, respectively), we explore two very different physical regimes: for M = 30, the radiative losses dominate the…
Crushing of Interstellar Gas Clouds in Supernova Remnants: the Role of Thermal Conduction and Radiative Losses
We model hydrodynamic interactions of an old supernova remnant shock wave with a small interstellar gas cloud, taking into account the effects of thermal conduction and radiative losses. In particular, we consider a representative case of a Mach 30 shock impacting on an isolated cloud with density contrast χ = 10 with respect to the ambient medium. Thermal conduction appears to be effective in suppressing the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities which would develop at the cloud boundaries. We demonstrate that the radiative losses play a crucial role in the dynamics of the shock-cloud interaction, dominating evolution of the shocked cloud medium.