Identification of the central compact object in the young supernova remnant 1E 0102.2–7219

• DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0433-0
• Publication Date: 2018-03-29T22:22:14Z
• Authors: Frédéric P. A. Vogt; Elizabeth S. Bart...; Ivo R. Seitenzahl; Michael A. Dopita; Parviz Ghavamian; Ashley J. Ruiter; Jason P. Terry
• Keywords: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics; 13. Climate action; Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies; 01 natural sciences; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

Oxygen-rich young supernova remnants are valuable objects for probing the outcome of nucleosynthetic processes in massive stars, as well as the physics of supernova explosions. Observed within a few thousand years after the supernova explosion, these systems contain fast-moving oxygen-rich and hydrogen-poor filaments visible at optical wavelengths: fragments of the progenitor's interior expelled at a few 1000 km/s during the supernova explosion. Here we report the first identification of the compact object in 1E0102.2-7219 in reprocessed Chandra X-ray Observatory data, enabled via the discovery of a ring-shaped structure visible primarily in optical recombination lines of Ne I and O I. The optical ring, discovered in integral field spectroscopy observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the Very Large Telescope, has a radius of $(2.10\pm0.35)$ arcsec = $(0.63\pm0.11)$ pc, and is expanding at a velocity of $90.5_{-30}^{+40}$ km/s. It surrounds an X-ray point source with an intrinsic X-ray luminosity $L_{i}$ (1.2--2.0 keV)= $(1.4\pm0.2)\times10^{33}$ erg/s. The energy distribution of the source indicates that this object is an isolated neutron star: a Central Compact Object akin to those present in the Cas A and Puppis A supernova remnants, and the first of its kind to be identified outside of our Galaxy.<br/>17 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, published in Nature Astronomy. v2: release of the accepted version, posted after the legal journal embargo ended<br/>