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Register a new userDust absorption and scattering in the silicon K-edge
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Authors
S.T. Zeegers
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The composition and properties of interstellar silicate dust are not well understood. In X-rays, interstellar dust can be studied in detail by making use of the fine structure features in the Si K-edge. The features in the Si K-edge offer a range of possibilities to study silicon-bearing dust, such as investigating the crystallinity, abundance, and the chemical composition along a given line of sight. We present newly acquired laboratory measurements of the silicon K-edge of several silicate-compounds that complement our measurements from our earlier pilot study. The resulting dust extinction profiles serve as templates for the interstellar extinction that we observe. The extinction profiles were used to model the interstellar dust in the dense environments of the Galaxy. The laboratory measurements, taken at the Soleil synchrotron facility in Paris, were adapted for astrophysical data analysis and implemented in the SPEX spectral fitting program. The models were used to fit the spectra of nine low-mass X-ray binaries located in the Galactic center neighborhood in order to determine the dust properties along those lines of sight. Most lines of sight can be fit well by amorphous olivine. We also established upper limits on the amount of crystalline material that the modeling allows. We obtained values of the total silicon abundance, silicon dust abundance, and depletion along each of the sightlines. We find a possible gradient of $0.06pm0.02$ dex/kpc for the total silicon abundance versus the Galactocentric distance. We do not find a relation between the depletion and the extinction along the line of sight.
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We study the absorption and scattering of X-ray radiation by interstellar dust particles, which allows us to access the physical and chemical properties of dust. The interstellar dust composition is not well understood, especially on the densest sight lines of the Galactic Plane. X-rays provide a powerful tool in this study. We present newly acquired laboratory measurements of silicate compounds taken at the Soleil synchrotron facility in Paris using the Lucia beamline. The dust absorption profiles resulting from this campaign were used in this pilot study to model the absorption by interstellar dust along the line of sight of the low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) GX 5-1. The measured laboratory cross-sections were adapted for astrophysical data analysis and the resulting extinction profiles of the Si K-edge were implemented in the SPEX spectral fitting program. We derive the properties of the interstellar dust along the line of sight by fitting the Si K-edge seen in absorption in the spectrum of GX 5-1. We measured the hydrogen column density towards GX 5-1 to be $3.40pm0.1times10^{22} rm cm^{-2}$. The best fit of the silicon edge in the spectrum of GX 5-1 is obtained by a mixture of olivine and pyroxene. In this study, our modeling is limited to Si absorption by silicates with different Mg:Fe ratios. We obtained an abundance of silicon in dust of $4.0pm0.3times10^{-5}$ per H atom and a lower limit for total abundance, considering both gas and dust, of $>4.4times10^{-5}$ per H atom, which leads to a gas to dust ratio of >0.22. Furthermore, an enhanced scattering feature in the Si K-edge may suggest the presence of large particles along the line of sight.
We survey the Si K edge structure in various absorbed Galactic low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) to study states of silicon in the inter- and circum-stellar medium. The bulk of these LMXBs lie toward the Galactic bulge region and all have column densities above $10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$. The observations were performed with the emph{Chandra} High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer. The Si K edge in all sources appears at an energy value of 1844$pm$0.001 eV. The edge exhibits significant substructure which can be described by a near edge absorption feature at 1849$pm$0.002 eV and a far edge absorption feature at 1865$pm$0.002 eV. Both of these absorption features appear variable with equivalent widths up to several mAA. We can describe the edge structure with several components: multiple edge functions, near edge absorption excesses from silicates in dust form, signatures from X-ray scattering optical depths, and a variable warm absorber from ionized atomic silicon. The measured optical depths of the edges indicate much higher values than expected from atomic silicon cross sections and ISM abundances, and appear consistent with predictions from silicate X-ray absorption and scattering. A comparison with models also indicates a preference for larger dust grain sizes. In many cases we identify sixiii resonance absorption and determine ionization parameters between log $xi$ = 1.8 and 2.8 and turbulent velocities between 300 and 1000 kms. This places the warm absorber in close vicinity of the X-ray binaries. In some data we observe a weak edge at 1.840 keV, potentially from a lesser contribution of neutral atomic silicon.
The chemical and physical properties of interstellar dust in the densest regions of the Galaxy are still not well understood. X-rays provide a powerful probe since they can penetrate gas and dust over a wide range of column densities (up to $10^{24} rm{cm}^{-2}$). The interaction (scattering and absorption) with the medium imprints spectral signatures that reflect the individual atoms which constitute the gas, molecule, or solid. In this work we investigate the ability of high resolution X-ray spectroscopy to probe the properties of cosmic grains containing iron. Although iron is heavily depleted into interstellar dust, the nature of the Fe-bearing grains is still largely uncertain. In our analysis we use iron K-edge synchrotron data of minerals likely present in the ISM dust taken at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. We explore the prospects of determining the chemical composition and the size of astrophysical dust in the Galactic centre and in molecular clouds with future X-ray missions. The energy resolution and the effective area of the present X-ray telescopes are not sufficient to detect and study the Fe K-edge, even for bright X-ray sources. From the analysis of the extinction cross sections of our dust models implemented in the spectral fitting program SPEX, the Fe K-edge is promising for investigating both the chemistry and the size distribution of the interstellar dust. We find that the chemical composition regulates the X-ray absorption fine structures in the post edge region, whereas the scattering feature in the pre-edge is sensitive to the mean grain size. Finally, we note that the Fe K-edge is insensitive to other dust properties, such as the porosity and the geometry of the dust.
Chandra high-resolution spectra toward eight low-mass Galactic binaries have been analyzed with a photoionization model that is capable of determining the physical state of the interstellar medium. Particular attention is given to the accuracy of the atomic data. Hydrogen column densities are derived with a broadband fit that takes into account pileup effects, and in general are in good agreement with previous results. The dominant features in the oxygen-edge region are O I and O II K$alpha$ absorption lines whose simultaneous fits lead to average values of the ionization parameter of $logxi=-2.90$ and oxygen abundance of $A_{rm O}=0.70$. The latter is relative to the standard by Grevesse & Sauval (1998), but a rescaling with the revision by Asplund et al. (2009) would lead to an average abundance value fairly close to solar. The low average oxygen column density ($N_{rm O}=9.2 times 10^{17}$ cm$^{-2}$) suggests a correlation with the low ionization parameters, the latter also being in evidence in the column density ratios OII/OI and OIII/OI that are estimated to be less than 0.1. We do not find conclusive evidence for absorption by any other compound but atomic oxygen.
Small angle scattering by dust grains causes a significant contribution to the total interstellar extinction for any X-ray instrument with sub-arcminute resolution (Chandra, Swift, XMM-Newton). However, the dust scattering component is not included in the current absorption models: phabs, tbabs, and tbnew. We simulate a large number of Chandra spectra to explore the bias in the spectral fit and NH measurements obtained without including extinction from dust scattering. We find that without incorporating dust scattering, the measured NH will be too large by a baseline level of 25%. This effect is modulated by the imaging resolution of the telescope, because some amount of unresolved scattered light will be captured within the aperture used to extract point source information. In high resolution spectroscopy, dust scattering significantly enhances the total extinction optical depth and the shape of the photoelectric absorption edges. We focus in particular on the Fe-L edge at 0.7 keV, showing that the total extinction template fits well to the high resolution spectrum of three X-ray binaries from the Chandra archive: GX 9+9, XTE J1817-330, and Cyg X-1. In cases where dust is intrinsic to the source, a covering factor based on the angular extent of the dusty material must be applied to the extinction curve, regardless of angular imaging resolution. This approach will be particularly relevant for dust in quasar absorption line systems and might constrain clump sizes in active galactic nuclei.
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