Energy crisis in the superbubble DEM L192 (N51D)

Superbubbles surrounding OB associations provide ideal laboratories in which to study the stellar energy feedback problem, because the stellar energy input can be estimated from the observed stellar content of the OB associations, and the interstellar thermal and kinetic energies of superbubbles are well defined and easy to observe. We have used DEM L192, also known as N51D, to carry out a detailed case study of the energy budget in a superbubble, and we find that the expected amount of stellar mechanical energy injected into the interstellar medium, (18 ± 5) × 10 ⁵¹ ergs, exceeds the amount of thermal and kinetic energies stored in the superbubble, (6 ± 2) × 10 ⁵¹ ergs. Clearly, a significant fraction of the stellar mechanical energy must have been converted into other forms of energy. The X-ray spectrum of the diffuse emission from DEM L192 requires a power-law component to explain the featureless emission at 1.0-3.0 keV. The origin of this power-law component is unclear, but it may be responsible for the discrepancy between the stellar energy input and the observed interstellar energy in DEM L192.