Modeling of X-ray images of Tycho's supernova remnant

Abstract

High-resolution Chandra X-ray observations of Tycho's supernova remnant (SNR 1572) have revealed several series of bright, nearly parallel stripes in some regions of the SNR clearly seen in 4-6 keV band images. The observed radiation of Tycho's SNR is most likely the synchrotron radiation of electrons with energies well above TeV. In this paper we present the modeling of synchrotron X-ray images of Tycho's SNR in order to reveal the physical mechanism of the observed coherent structures formation. It is shown that the mirror instability, which evolves in plasma near SNR shock as a result of anisotropic distribution function of accelerated particles, can be the reason of the bright stripes.