The impact of different interstellar medium structures on the dynamical evolution of supernova remnants

Abstract

The dynamical properties of supernova remnants (SNRs) evolving with different interstellar medium structures are investigated through performing extensive 2D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations in the cylindrical symmetry. Three cases of different interstellar medium structures are considered: the uniform medium, the turbulent medium, and the cloudy medium. Large-scale density and magnetic fluctuations are calculated and mapped into the computational domain before simulations. The clouds are set by random distribution in advance. The above configuration allows us to study the time-dependent dynamical properties and morphological evolution of the SNR evolving with different ambient structures, along with the development of the instabilities at the contact discontinuity. Our simulation results indicate that remnant morphology deviates from symmetry if the interstellar mediumcontains clouds or turbulent density fluctuations. In the cloudy medium case, interactions between the shock wave and clouds lead to clouds’ fragmentation. The magnetic field can be greatly enhanced by stretching field lines with a combination of instabilities while the width of amplification region is quite different among the three cases. Moreover, both the width of amplification region and the maximum magnetic-field strength are closely related to the clouds’ density.