On the Nature of the Broad 26Al Line Observed by GRIS
S. J. Sturner, J. E. Naya
Abstract
Recent observations of the Galactic Center region by the GRIS balloon-borne germanium
spectrometer have determined that the diffuse 1809 keV emission resulting from the decay of 26Al has
an intrinsic width of 5.4 keV FWHM. This line width indicates that the 26Al is either at a
temperature of ~ 4.5×108 K or it has a nonthermal velocity of ~ 500 km s-1. Previous
authors have suggested that the 26Al must be trapped within dust grains in the ISM in order for these
conditions to persist over the 106 year lifetime of the aluminum (see e.g. Naya et al. 1996, Chen et al.
1998). We discuss the results of our model in which 26Al dust grains are produced in
Type II supernovae and are subsequently reacceleration in the ISM by ambient
supernova remnant (SNR) shocks. Our results show that dust grains can be maintained at a velocity
sufficient to explain the GRIS observation for ISM densities of ~ 0.2 cm-3, dust grain sizes
near 10-5 cm, and distances between SNR shocks in the ISM of 100 - 200 pc.
File translated from TEX by TTH, version 2.32.
On 16 Jul 1999, 09:19.