Poster Presentation Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting including HWWS 2013

Dense gas towards the supernova remnants RX J1713.7-3946 and W28 (#246)

Nigel Maxted 1 , Gavin Rowell 1 , Brent Nicholas 1 , Michael Burton 2 , Yasuo Fukui 3 , Andrew Walsh 4 , Akiko Kawamura 3 , Hirotaka Horachi 3 , Jasmina Lazendic 3 , Hidetoshi Sano 3 , Satoshi Yoshiike 3 , Tatsuya Fukuda 3
  1. The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia
  2. The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
  3. The University of Nagoya, Nagoya, Japan
  4. Curtin University, Perth, Australia

We study the dense gas towards the young (~1 000yr) supernova remnant, RX J1713.7-3946, and the old (~10 000yr) supernova remnant, W28, using the Mopra radio telescope. Both of these remnants are TeV gamma-ray sources, which suggests local high energy particle populations. It follows that these objects are perfect targets for the study of the origin of cosmic-rays.

Gas density inhomogeneities may inhibit the passage of cosmic ray protons and/or provide extra cosmic ray proton target material. These two effects may be energy-dependent, hence may have signatures in gamma-ray observations (spatially and in energy spectra), therefore dense gas studies offer a novel way to test for the hadronic (p-p interactions) scenario and investigate the potential acceleration of cosmic rays in these objects.

We present the latest results from our Mopra 7 and 12mm surveys towards RX J1713.7-3946 and W28.