Massive stars, due to their short lifetime and high energy output, drive the evolution of galaxies across cosmic time. Hence, they substantially contribute to shaping the present-day Universe. The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) will unravel the “habitats of massive stars across cosmic time”. “Habitats” are the gaseous environments within which massive stars are born and which they interact with via their feedback. Over the anticipated 12-year lifetime of this new CRC initiative, we aim to connect the physical processes that govern the habitats of massive stars across the full range of environments hosting massive stars – from sub-parsec to mega-parsec scales and from the Milky Way to the high-redshift Universe, where massive stars leave their cosmological fingerprint by driving cosmic reionisation.
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“Dynamics of the Universe”
Our universe is full of fascinating, mysterious and often surprising phenomena. Understanding and explaining this in physical terms is the task of the new key profile area Dynamics of the Universe.
The Dynamics of the Universe key profile area establishes an excellent environment for training, early contact with current research, and exchange in international co-operations and competitions. In addition, the interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of physics, computer science and applied mathematics will be strengthened in the long term. This is particularly important given the need to meet unprecedented challenges arising from the large amounts of observational data being generated by way of innovative ideas and algorithms, and to enable and efficiently advance complex simulations using new hardware technologies.
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B5: Modelling the environment that shapes an RCW 103 supernova remnant (Ekaterina Makarenko)
Massive stars (M > 8 solar masses) significantly affect the surrounding medium during their life through stellar winds and ionising radiation. These processes shape the circumstellar medium (CSM) into complex structures, including cavities. When a massive star explodes as a supernova (SN), the resulting shock wave expands into this non-uniform medium, generating bright X-ray emission. As a result, X-ray observations of SN remnants (SNRs) provide insights into the stellar evolution of a progenitor massive star and the interstellar medium (ISM) nearby.
RCW 103 is a young (∼2000 years) Galactic SNR that has begun interacting with its CSM. Despite evidence of an initially asymmetric density distribution at the explosion site, its observed X-ray morphology appears almost circular with a slight asymmetry towards the southwest. The cause of this morphology remains unclear. To explore this, we perform 3D (magneto-)hydrodynamic simulations using the FLASH code, incorporating radiative cooling and self-consistent treatment of X-ray emission.
We simulate the evolution of a massive star (18 M solar masses) in a uniform ISM, including the effects of ionising radiation and stellar winds. After the SN event, we track the shock propagation and X-ray emission across multiple energy bands, similar to Chandra observations. An example of synthetic X-ray maps in the corresponding energy bands is shown in Figure 1. As the progenitor star is not stationary, the stellar wind cavity is asymmetrical, leading to a brighter X-ray emission at the edges.
This is an ongoing project that focuses on identifying the primary reason responsible for the morphology in RCW 103’s X-ray emission. Possible explanations include the progenitor star’s runaway velocity, which caused a bow shock to form, the influence of interstellar magnetic fields, or a nearby molecular cloud. Modelling these effects will improve our understanding of SNR-ISM interaction.
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1st funding period: 10/2023 – 06/2027