| Following the lone detection of the Galactic supernova remnant Cas A by gamma-ray detectors aboard CGRO and hard X-ray detectors aboard INTEGRAL in the nuclear lines of the 44Ti decay chain, The et al, 2006, argued that these surveys should have detected several sources, given models for the yield of 44Ti and an estimate of the Galactic supernova rate. In this thesis, this result is revisited by exploring the effect of various newer yield models of Type II supernovae, which include yields that differ by approximately an order of magnitude. We also consider several estimates of the Galactic supernova rate, which also differ by an order of magnitude, and various models for the Galactic distribution of massive stars. We find that the lone detection of Cas A is in fact consistent with a large number of reasonable models. We find that in order to detect a significant number of previously unknown remnants in a survey for 44Ti and thus constrain supernova models, a sensitivity to fluxes of less than 1E-7 photon per square cm per second within an absolute Galactic latitude of less than 5 degrees is required. |
