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Register a new userX-ray and Gamma-ray Observations of the Fermi Bubbles and NPS/Loop I Structures
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The Fermi bubbles were possibly created by large injections of energy into the Galactic Center (GC), either by an active galactic nucleus (AGN) or by nuclear starburst more than ~10 Myr ago. However, the origin of the diffuse gamma-ray emission associated with Loop I, a radio continuum loop spanning across 100 deg on the sky, is still being debated. The northern-most part of Loop I, known as the North Polar Spur (NPS), is the brightest arm and is even clearly visible in the ROSAT X-ray sky map. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review on the X-ray observations of the Fermi bubbles and their possible association with the NPS and Loop I structures. Using uniform analysis of archival Suzaku and Swift data, we show that X-ray plasma with kT ~ 0.3 keV and low metal abundance (Z ~ 0.2 Z_solar) is ubiquitous in both the bubbles and Loop I and is naturally interpreted as weakly shock-heated Galactic halo gas. However, the observed asymmetry of the X-ray-emitting gas above and below the GC has still not been resolved; it cannot be fully explained by the inclination of the axis of the Fermi bubbles to the Galactic disk normal. We argue that the NPS and Loop I may be asymmetric remnants of a large explosion that occurred before the event that created the Fermi bubbles, and that the soft gamma-ray emission from Loop I may be due to either pi^0 decay of accelerated protons or electron bremsstrahlung.
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The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on Fermi has detected ~150 gamma-ray pulsars, about a third of which were discovered in blind searches of the $gamma$-ray data. Because the angular resolution of the LAT is relatively poor and blind searches for pulsars (especially millisecond pulsars, MSPs) are very sensitive to an error in the position, one must typically scan large numbers of locations. Identifying plausible X-ray counterparts of a putative pulsar drastically reduces the number of trials, thus improving the sensitivity of pulsar blind searches with the LAT. I discuss our ongoing program of Swift, XMM-Newton, and Chandra observations of LAT unassociated sources in the context of our blind searches for gamma-ray pulsars.
We present Suzaku X-ray observations along two edge regions of the Fermi Bubbles, with eight ~20 ksec pointings across the northern part of the North Polar Spur (NPS) surrounding the north bubble and six across the southernmost edge of the south bubble. After removing compact X-ray features, diffuse X-ray emission is clearly detected and is well reproduced by a three-component spectral model consisting of unabsorbed thermal emission (temperature kT ~0.1 keV from the Local Bubble (LB), absorbed kT ~0.3 keV thermal emission related to the NPS and/or Galactic Halo (GH), and a power-law component at a level consistent with the cosmic X-ray background. The emission measure (EM) of the 0.3 keV plasma decreases by ~50% toward the inner regions of the north-east bubble, with no accompanying temperature change. However, such a jump in the EM is not clearly seen in the south bubble data. While it is unclear if the NPS originates from a nearby supernova remnant or is related to previous activity within/around the Galactic Center, our Suzaku observations provide evidence suggestive of the latter scenario. In the latter framework, the presence of a large amount of neutral matter absorbing the X-ray emission as well as the existence of the kT ~ 0.3 keV gas can be naturally interpreted as a weak shock driven by the bubbles expansion in the surrounding medium, with velocity v_exp ~300 km/s (corresponding to shock Mach number M ~1.5), compressing the GH gas to form the NPS feature. We also derived an upper limit for any non-thermal X-ray emission component associated with the bubbles and demonstrate, that in agreement with the findings above, the non-thermal pressure and energy estimated from a one-zone leptonic model of its broad-band spectrum, are in rough equilibrium with that of the surrounding thermal plasma.
We present precise phase-connected pulse timing solutions for 16 gamma-ray-selected pulsars recently discovered using the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope plus one very faint radio pulsar (PSR J1124-5916) that is more effectively timed with the LAT. We describe the analysis techniques including a maximum likelihood method for determining pulse times of arrival from unbinned photon data. A major result of this work is improved position determinations, which are crucial for multi-wavelength follow up. For most of the pulsars, we overlay the timing localizations on X-ray images from Swift and describe the status of X-ray counterpart associations. We report glitches measured in PSRs J0007+7303, J1124-5916, and J1813-1246. We analyze a new 20 ks Chandra ACIS observation of PSR J0633+0632 that reveals an arcminute-scale X-ray nebula extending to the south of the pulsar. We were also able to precisely localize the X-ray point source counterpart to the pulsar and find a spectrum that can be described by an absorbed blackbody or neutron star atmosphere with a hard powerlaw component. Another Chandra ACIS image of PSR J1732-3131 reveals a faint X-ray point source at a location consistent with the timing position of the pulsar. Finally, we present a compilation of new and archival searches for radio pulsations from each of the gamma-ray-selected pulsars as well as a new Parkes radio observation of PSR J1124-5916 to establish the gamma-ray to radio phase offset.
The nature of the bipolar, $gamma$-ray Fermi bubbles (FB) is still unclear, in part because their faint, high-latitude X-ray counterpart has until now eluded a clear detection. We stack ROSAT data at varying distances from the FB edges, thus boosting the signal and identifying an expanding shell behind the southwest, southeast, and northwest edges, albeit not in the dusty northeast sector near Loop I. A Primakoff-like model for the underlying flow is invoked to show that the signals are consistent with halo gas heated by a strong, forward shock to $sim$keV temperatures. Assuming ion--electron thermal equilibrium then implies a $sim10^{56}$ erg event near the Galactic centre $sim7$ Myr ago. However, the reported high absorption-line velocities suggest a preferential shock-heating of ions, and thus more energetic ($sim 10^{57}$ erg), younger ($lesssim 3$ Myr) FBs.
We report on Suzaku observations of large-scale X-ray structures possibly related with the Fermi Bubbles obtained in 2013 with a total duration of ~ 80 ks. The observed regions were the: (i) northern cap (N-cap; l ~ 0 deg, 45 deg < b < 55 deg) seen in the Mid-band (1.7-4.0 keV) map recently provided by MAXI-SSC and (ii) southeast claw (SE-claw; l ~ 10 deg, -20 deg < b < -10 deg) seen in the ROSAT all-sky map and MAXI-SSC Low-band (0.7-1.7 keV) map. In each region, we detected diffuse X-ray emissions which are represented by a three component plasma model consisting of an unabsorbed thermal component (kT ~ 0.1 keV) from the Local Bubble, absorbed kT = 0.30+/-0.05 keV emission representing the Galactic Halo, and a power-law component due to the isotropic cosmic X-ray background radiation. The emission measure of the GH component in the SE-claw shows an excess by a factor of ~ 2.5 over the surrounding emission at 2 deg away. We also found a broad excess in the 1.7-4.0 keV count rates across the N-cap after compiling other archival data from Suzaku and Swift. The spectral stacking analysis of the N-cap data indicates the presence of another thermal component with kT = 0.70 (+0.22,-0.11) keV. The temperature of kT ~ 0.3 keV of the Galactic Halo is higher than the ubiquitous value of kT ~ 0.2 keV near the Fermi Bubbles, and can be even higher (~ 0.7 keV). We discuss our findings in the context of bubble-halo interaction.
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