DISCOVERY OF STRONG RADIATIVE RECOMBINATION CONTINUA FROM THE SUPERNOVA REMNANT IC 443 WITH SUZAKU

We present the Suzaku spectroscopic study of the Galactic middle-aged supernova remnant (SNR) IC 443. The X-ray spectrum in the 1.75-6.0 keV band is described by an optically thin thermal plasma with the electron temperature of ∼0.6 keV and several additional Lyman lines. We robustly detect, for the first time, strong radiative recombination continua (RRC) of H-like Si and S around at 2.7 and 3.5 keV. The ionization temperatures of Si and S determined from the intensity ratios of the RRC to He-like Kα lines are ∼1.0 keV and ∼1.2 keV, respectively. We thus find firm evidence for an extremely overionized (recombining) plasma. As the origin of the overionization, a thermal conduction scenario argued in previous work is not favored in our new results. We propose that the highly ionized gas was made at the initial phase of the SNR evolution in dense regions around a massive progenitor, and the low electron temperature is due to a rapid cooling by an adiabatic expansion.