Supernovae and Their Remnants

Abstract

Supernovae (SNe) and supernova remnants (SNRs) represent an important area of research in astrophysics because they are central to our understanding of such diverse fields as the late stages of stellar evolution, mass loss from late-type stars, nucleosynthesis, and interstellar medium processes and abundances. In addition, they provide a laboratory for investigating the physics of explosion mechanisms, blast waves and dust grain formation and destruction. SNe and young SNRs provide information on the dynamics of the explosion, and the abundances in the ejecta provide direct evidence for nucleosynthesis. In some cases, this information can be used with stellar evolution models to infer the properties of the precursor star. Evolved remnants can be used as probes of normally invisible regions of the interstellar medium (ISM). The passage of a SN blast wave heats and compresses the ISM, and observation of the subsequent cooling flow provides information on abundances and physical conditions in both the pre-shock and post-shock gas. Extensive reviews on SNe and SNRs can be found in the proceedings of several recent conferences, including IAU Symposium 101 (Danziger and Gorenstein, 1983), ‘Supernovae as Distance Indicators’ (Bartel, 1985), the NATO ASI on ‘Supernovae: A Survey of Current Research’ (Rees and Stoneham 1982) and the Cargese conference on ‘High Energy Phenomena Around Collapsed Stars’ (Pacini, 1986). Several recent reviews on SNRs have addressed both the observational (Raymond, 1983, 1984; Lozinskaya, 1984) and theoretical (McKee and Hollenbach, 1980) aspects of these objects.