Asymmetric Type-Ia supernova origin of W49B as revealed from spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopic study

The origin of the asymmetric supernova remnant (SNR) W49B has been a matter of debate: is it produced by a rare jet-driven core-collapse supernova, or by a normal supernova that is strongly shaped by its dense environment? Aiming to uncover the explosion mechanism and origin of the asymmetric, centrally filled X-ray morphology of W49B, we have performed spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy and a search for potential point sources. We report new candidate point sources inside W49B. The Chandra X-ray spectra from W49B are well-characterized by two-temperature gas components ($\sim 0.27$ keV + 0.6--2.2 keV). The hot component gas shows a large temperature gradient from the northeast to the southwest and is over-ionized in most regions with recombination timescales of 1--$10\times 10^{11}$ cm$^{-3}$ s. The Fe element shows strong lateral distribution in the SNR east, while the distribution of Si, S, Ar, Ca is relatively smooth and nearly axially symmetric. Asymmetric Type-Ia explosion of a Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf well-explains the abundance ratios and metal distribution of W49B, whereas a jet-driven explosion and normal core-collapse models fail to describe the abundance ratios and large masses of iron-group elements. A model based on a multi-spot ignition of the white dwarf can explain the observed high $M_{\rm Mn}/M_{\rm Cr}$ value (0.8--2.2). The bar-like morphology is mainly due to a density enhancement in the center, given the good spatial correlation between gas density and X-ray brightness. The recombination ages and the Sedov age consistently suggest a revised SNR age of 5--6 kyr. This study suggests that despite the presence of candidate point sources projected within the boundary of this SNR, W49B is likely a Type-Ia SNR, which suggests that Type-Ia supernovae can also result in mixed-morphology SNRs.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in A&

Visual Comfort Assessment for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting

In recent years, visual comfort assessment (VCA) for 3D/stereoscopic content has aroused extensive attention. However, much less work has been done on the perceptual evaluation of stereoscopic image retargeting. In this paper, we first build a Stereoscopic Image Retargeting Database (SIRD), which contains source images and retargeted images produced by four typical stereoscopic retargeting methods. Then, the subjective experiment is conducted to assess four aspects of visual distortion, i.e. visual comfort, image quality, depth quality and the overall quality. Furthermore, we propose a Visual Comfort Assessment metric for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting (VCA-SIR). Based on the characteristics of stereoscopic retargeted images, the proposed model introduces novel features like disparity range, boundary disparity as well as disparity intensity distribution into the assessment model. Experimental results demonstrate that VCA-SIR can achieve high consistency with subjective perception