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Register a new userThe Origin of the Galactic Center Diffuse X-ray Emission Investigated by Near-infrared Imaging and Polarimetric Observations
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The origin of the Galactic center diffuse X-ray emission (GCDX) is still under intense investigation. We have found a clear excess in a longitudinal GCDX profile over a stellar number density profile in the nuclear bulge region, suggesting a significant contribution of diffuse, interstellar hot plasma to the GCDX. We have estimated that contributions of an old stellar population to the GCDX are about 50 % and 20 % in the nuclear stellar disk and nuclear star cluster, respectively. Our near-infrared polarimetric observations show that the GCDX region is permeated by a large scale, toroidal magnetic field. Together with observed magnetic field strengths in nearly energy equipartition, the interstellar hot plasma could be confined by the toroidal magnetic field.
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We analyse new results of Chandra and Suzaku which found a flux of hard X-ray emission from the compact region around Sgr A$^ast$ (r ~ 100 pc). We suppose that this emission is generated by accretion processes onto the central supermassive blackhole when an unbounded part of captured stars obtains an additional momentum. As a result a flux of subrelativistic protons is generated near the Galactic center which heats the background plasma up to temperatures about 6-10 keV and produces by inverse bremsstrahlung a flux of non-thermal X-ray emission in the energy range above 10 keV.
An unresolved X-ray glow (at energies above a few kiloelectronvolts) was discovered about 25 years ago and found to be coincident with the Galactic disk -the Galactic ridge X-ray emission. This emission has a spectrum characteristic of a 1e8 K optically thin thermal plasma, with a prominent iron emission line at 6.7 keV. The gravitational well of the Galactic disk, however, is far too shallow to confine such a hot interstellar medium; instead, it would flow away at a velocity of a few thousand kilometres per second, exceeding the speed of sound in gas. To replenish the energy losses requires a source of 10^{43} erg/s, exceeding by orders of magnitude all plausible energy sources in the Milky Way. An alternative is that the hot plasma is bound to a multitude of faint sources, which is supported by the recently observed similarities in the X-ray and near-infrared surface brightness distributions (the latter traces the Galactic stellar distribution). Here we report that at energies of 6-7 keV, more than 80 per cent of the seemingly diffuse X-ray emission is resolved into discrete sources, probably accreting white dwarfs and coronally active stars.
We study the hard X-ray (20-100 keV) variability of the Galactic Center (GC) and of the nearby sources on the time scale of 1000 s. We find that 3 of the 6 hard X-ray sources detected by INTEGRAL within the central 1 degree of the Galaxy are not variable on this time scale: the GC itself (the source IGR J1745.6-2901) as well as the source 1E 1743.1-2843 and the molecular cloud Sgr B2. We put an upper limit of 5 x 10^{-12} erg/(cm^2 sec) (in 20 to 60 keV band) on the variable emission form the supermassive black hole (the source Sgr A*) which powers the activity of the GC(although we can not exclude the possibility of rare stronger flares). The non-variable 20-100 keV emission from the GC turns out to be the high-energy non-thermal tail of the diffuse hard ``8 keV component of emission from Sgr A region. Combining the XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL data we find that the size of the extended hard X-ray emission region is about 20 pc. The only physical mechanism of production of diffuse non-thermal hard X-ray flux, which does not contradict the multi-wavelength data on the GC, is the synchrotron emission from electrons of energies 10-100 TeV.
We analyze a pair of Suzaku shadowing observations in order to determine the X-ray spectrum of the Galaxys gaseous halo. We simultaneously fit the spectra with models having halo, local, and extragalactic components. The intrinsic intensities of the halo OVII triplet and OVIII Lyman alpha emission lines are 9.98^{+1.10}_{-1.99} LU (line unit; photons cm^-2 s^-1 Sr^-1) and 2.66^{+0.37}_{-0.30} LU, respectively. Meanwhile, FUSE OVI observations for the same directions and SPEAR CIV observations for a nearby direction indicate the existence of hot halo gas at temperatures of ~10^{5.0} K to ~10^{6.0} K. This collection of data implies that the hot gas in the Galactic halo is not isothermal, but its temperature spans a relatively wide range from ~10^{5.0} K to ~10^{7.0} K. We therefore construct a differential emission measure (DEM) model for the halos hot gas, consisting of two components. In each, dEM/dlog T is assumed to follow a power-law function of the temperature and the gas is assumed to be in collisional ionizational equilibrium. The low-temperature component (LTC) of the broken power-law DEM model covers the temperature range of 10^{4.80}-10^{6.02} K with a slope of 0.30 and the high-temperature component (HTC) covers the temperature range of 10^{6.02}-10^{7.02} K with a slope of -2.21. We find that a simple model in which hot gas accretes onto the Galactic halo and cools radiatively cannot explain both the observed UV and X-ray portions of our broken power-law model. It can, however, explain the intensity in the Suzaku bandpass if the mass infall rate is 1.35*10^{-3} Msun yr^-1 kpc^-2. The UV and X-ray intensities and our broken power-law model can be well explained by hot gas produced by supernova explosions or by supernova remnants supplemented by a smooth source of X-rays.
This paper reports the analysis procedure and results of simultaneous spectral fits of the Suzaku archive data for Sagittarius (Sgr) A East and the nearby Galactic center X-ray emission (GCXE). The results are that the mixed-morphology supernova remnant Sgr A East has a recombining plasma (RP) with Cr and Mn He$alpha$ lines, and a power-law component (PL) with an Fe I K$alpha$ line. The nearby GCXE has a $sim$1.5-times larger surface brightness than the mean GCXE far from Sgr A East, although the spectral shape is almost identical. Based on these results, we interpret that the origins of the RP and the PL with the Fe I K$alpha$ line are past big flares of Sgr A$^*$.
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