  Shock fronts in young supernova remnants are the best candidates for being
sites of cosmic ray acceleration up to a few PeV, though conclusive
experimental evidence is still lacking. Hadron acceleration is expected to
increase the shock compression ratio, providing higher postshock densities, but
X-ray emission from shocked ambient medium has not firmly been detected yet in
remnants where particle acceleration is at work. We exploited the deep
observations of the XMM-Newton Large Program on SN 1006 to verify this
prediction. We performed spatially resolved spectral analysis of a set of
regions covering the southeastern rim of SN 1006. We studied the spatial
distribution of the thermodynamic properties of the ambient medium and
carefully verified the robustness of the result with respect to the analysis
method. We detected the contribution of the shocked ambient medium. We also
found that the postshock density of the interstellar medium significantly
increases in regions where particle acceleration is efficient. Under the
assumption of uniform preshock density, we found that the shock compression
ratio reaches a value of ~6 in regions near the nonthermal limbs. Our results
support the predictions of shock modification theory and indicate that effects
of acceleration of cosmic ray hadrons on the postshock plasma can be observed
in supernova remnants.
