No Arabic abstract
X-ray luminosity, temperature, gas mass, total mass, and their scaling relations are derived for 94 early-type galaxies using archival $Chandra$ X-ray Observatory observations. Consistent with earlier studies, the scaling relations, $L_X propto T^{4.5pm0.2}$, $M propto T^{2.4pm0.2}$, and $L_X propto M^{2.8pm0.3}$, are significantly steeper than expected from self similarity. This steepening indicates that their atmospheres are heated above the level expected from gravitational infall alone. Energetic feedback from nuclear black holes and supernova explosions are likely heating agents. The tight $L_X - T$ correlation for low-luminosities systems (i.e., below 10$^{40}$ erg/s) are at variance with hydrodynamical simulations which generally predict higher temperatures for low luminosity galaxies. We also investigate the relationship between total mass and pressure, $Y_X = M_g times T$, finding $M propto Y_{X}^{0.45pm0.04}$. We explore the gas mass to total mass fraction in early-type galaxies and find a range of $0.1-1.0%$. We find no correlation between the gas-to-total mass fraction with temperature or total mass. Higher stellar velocity dispersions and higher metallicities are found in hotter, brighter, and more massive atmospheres. X-ray core radii derived from $beta$-model fitting are used to characterize the degree of core and cuspiness of hot atmospheres.
Several dedicated surveys focusing on early-type galaxies (ETGs) reveal that significant fractions of them are detectable in all interstellar medium phases studied to date. We select ETGs from the Herschel Reference Survey that have both far-infrared Herschel and either HI or CO detection (or both). We derive their star formation rates (SFR), stellar masses and dust masses via modelling their spectral energy distributions. We combine these with literature information on their atomic and molecular gas properties, in order to relate their star formation, total gas mass and dust mass on global scales. The ETGs deviate from the dust mass-SFR relation and the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation that SDSS star forming galaxies define: compared to SDSS galaxies, ETGs have more dust at the same SFR, or less SFR at the same dust mass. When placing them in the M*-SFR plane, ETGs show a much lower specific SFR as compared to normal star-forming galaxies. ETGs show a large scatter compared to the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation found locally within our Galaxy, extending to lower SFRs and gas mass surface densities. Using an ETGs SFR and the Schmidt-Kennicutt law to predict its gas mass leads to an underestimate. ETGs have similar observed-gas-to-modelled-dust mass ratios to star forming-galaxies of the same stellar mass, as well as they exhibit a similar scatter.
I review our understanding of classic dynamical scaling relations, relating luminosity, size and kinematics of early-type galaxies. Using unbiased determinations of galaxy mass profiles from stellar dynamical models, a simple picture has emerged in which scaling relations are driven by virial equilibrium, accompanied by a trend in the stellar mass-to-light ratio (M/L). This picture confirms the earliest insights. The trend is mainly due to the combined variation of age, metallicity and the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The systematic variations best correlate with the galaxy velocity dispersion, which traces the bulge mass fraction. This indicates a link between bulge growth and quenching of star formation. Dark matter is unimportant within the half-light radius, where the total mass profile is close to isothermal ($rhopropto r^{-2}$).
High resolution 2D hydrodynamical simulations describing the evolution of the hot ISM in axisymmetric two-component models of early-type galaxies well reproduced the observed trends of the X-ray luminosity ($L_mathrm{x}$) and temperature ($T_mathrm{x}$) with galaxy shape and rotation, however they also revealed the formation of an exceedingly massive cooled gas disc in rotating systems. In a follow-up of this study, here we investigate the effects of star formation in the disc, including the consequent injection of mass, momentum and energy in the pre-existing interstellar medium. It is found that subsequent generations of stars originate one after the other in the equatorial region; the mean age of the new stars is $> 5$ Gyr, and the adopted recipe for star formation can reproduce the empirical Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. The results of the previous investigation without star formation, concerning $L_mathrm{x}$ and $T_mathrm{x}$ of the hot gas, and their trends with galactic shape and rotation, are confirmed. At the same time, the consumption of most of the cold gas disc into new stars leads to more realistic final systems, whose cold gas mass and star formation rate agree well with those observed in the local universe. In particular, our models could explain the observation of kinematically aligned gas in massive, fast-rotating early-type galaxies.
The past decade has seen a large progress in the X-ray investigation of early-type galaxies of the local universe, and first attempts have been made to reach redshifts z>0 for these objects, thanks to the high angular resolution and sensitivity of the satellites Chandra and XMM-Newton. Major advances have been obtained in our knowledge of the three separate contributors to the X-ray emission, that are the stellar sources, the hot gas and the galactic nucleus. Here a brief outline of the main results is presented, pointing out the questions that remain open, and finally discussing the prospects to solve them with a wide area X-ray survey mission such as WFXT.
We present new Chandra constraints on the X-ray luminosity functions (XLFs) of X-ray binary (XRB) populations, and their scaling relations, for a sample of 38 nearby galaxies (D = 3.4-29 Mpc). Our galaxy sample is drawn primarily from the Spitzer infrared nearby galaxy survey (SINGS), and contains a wealth of Chandra (5.8 Ms total) and multiwavelength data, allowing for star-formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses (M*) to be measured on subgalactic scales. We divided the 2478 X-ray detected sources into 21 subsamples in bins of specific-SFR (sSFR = SFR/M*) and constructed XLFs. To model the XLF dependence on sSFR, we fit a global XLF model, containing contributions from high-mass XRBs (HMXBs), low-mass XRBs (LMXBs), and background sources from the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) that respectively scale with SFR, M*, and sky area. We find an HMXB XLF that is more complex in shape than previously reported and an LMXB XLF that likely varies with sSFR, potentially due to an age dependence. When applying our global model to XLF data for each individual galaxy, we discover a few galaxy XLFs that significantly deviate from our model beyond statistical scatter. Most notably, relatively low-metallicity galaxies have an excess of HMXBs above ~10^38 erg/s and elliptical galaxies that have relatively rich populations of globular clusters (GCs) show excesses of LMXBs compared to the global model. Additional modeling of how the XRB XLF depends on stellar age, metallicity, and GC specific frequency is required to sufficiently characterize the XLFs of galaxies.