Fine structure of the thermal and non-thermal X-rays in the SN 1006 shell Original Research Article

The North Eastern shell of SN 1006 is the most probable acceleration site of high-energy electrons (up to ∼100 TeV) with the Fermi acceleration mechanism at the shock front. We resolved non-thermal filaments from thermal emission in the shell with the excellent spatial resolution of Chandra. The non-thermal filaments seem thin sheets with the scales of ∼1 arcsec (0.01 pc) and ∼20 arcsec (0.19 pc) upstream and downstream of the shock, respectively. In a simple diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) model with the magnetic field parallel to the shock normal, the downstream region should have a highly disordered magnetic field of 30–40 μG. The width at the upstream side is extremely small, comparable to the gyro-radius of the maximum energy electrons. This result might imply that the possible scenario is not the conventional diffusive shock acceleration with a parallel magnetic field but that with a nearly perpendicular field or electron shock surfing acceleration.