We present results from a sample of XMM-Newton and Suzaku observations of interstellar clouds that cast shadows in the soft X-ray background (SXRB) - the first uniform analysis of such a sample from these missions. By fitting to the on- and off-shado
w spectra, we separated the foreground and Galactic halo components of the SXRB. We tested different foreground models - two solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) models and a Local Bubble (LB) model. We also examined different abundance tables. We found that Anders & Grevesse (1989) abundances, commonly used in previous SXRB studies, may result in overestimated foreground brightnesses and halo temperatures. We also found that assuming a single solar wind ionization temperature for a SWCX model can lead to unreliable results. We compared our measurements of the foreground emission with predictions of the SWCX emission from a smooth solar wind, finding only partial agreement. Using available observation-specific SWCX predictions and various plausible assumptions, we placed an upper limit on the LBs OVII intensity of ~0.8 photons/cm^2/s/sr (90% confidence). Comparing the halo results obtained with SWCX and LB foreground models implies that, if the foreground is dominated by SWCX and is brighter than ~1.5e-12 erg/cm^2/s/deg^2 (0.4-1.0 keV), then using an LB foreground model may bias the halo temperature upward and the 0.5-2.0 keV surface brightness downward by ~(0.2-0.3)e6 K and ~(1-2)e-12 erg/cm^2/s/deg^2, respectively. Similarly, comparing results from different observatories implies that there may be uncertainties in the halo temperature and surface brightness of up to ~0.2e6 K and ~25%, respectively, in addition to the statistical uncertainties. These uncertainties or biases may limit the ability of X-ray measurements to discriminate between Galactic halo models.
We test the X-ray emission predictions of galactic fountain models against XMM-Newton measurements of the emission from the Milky Ways hot halo. These measurements are from 110 sight lines, spanning the full range of Galactic longitudes. We find that
a magnetohydrodynamical simulation of a supernova-driven interstellar medium, which features a flow of hot gas from the disk to the halo, reproduces the temperature but significantly underpredicts the 0.5-2.0 keV surface brightness of the halo (by two orders of magnitude, if we compare the median predicted and observed values). This is true f
Observations of interstellar clouds that cast shadows in the soft X-ray background can be used to separate the background Galactic halo emission from the local emission due to solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) and/or the Local Bubble (LB). We present
an XMM-Newton observation of a shadowing cloud, G225.60-66.40, that is sufficiently compact that the on- and off-shadow spectra can be extracted from a single field of view (unlike previous shadowing observations of the halo with CCD-resolution spectrometers, which consisted of separate on- and off-shadow pointings). We analyzed the spectra using a variety of foreground models: one representing LB emission, and two representing SWCX emission. We found that the resulting halo model parameters (temperature $T_h approx 2 times 10^6$ K, emission measure $E_h approx 4 times 10^{-3}$ cm$^{-6}$ pc) were not sensitive to the foreground model used. This is likely due to the relative faintness of the foreground emission in this observation. However, the data do favor the existence of a foreground. The halo parameters derived from this observation are in good agreement with those from previous shadowing observations, and from an XMM-Newton survey of the Galactic halo emission. This supports the conclusion that the latter results are not subject to systematic errors, and can confidently be used to test models of the halo emission.
A soft X-ray enhancement has recently been reported toward the high-velocity cloud MS30.7-81.4-118 (MS30.7), a constituent of the Magellanic Stream. In order to investigate the origin of this enhancement, we have analyzed two overlapping XMM-Newton o
bservations of this cloud. We find that the X-ray enhancement is $sim$6 or $sim$100 pc across, and is concentrated to the north and west of the densest part of the cloud. We modeled the X-ray enhancement with a variety of spectral models. A single-temperature equilibrium plasma model yields a temperature of $(3.69^{+0.47}_{-0.44}) times 10^6$ K and a 0.4-2.0 keV luminosity of $7.9 times 10^{33}$ erg s$^{-1}$. However, this model underpredicts the on-enhancement emission around 1 keV, which may indicate the additional presence of hotter plasma ($T gtrsim 10^7$ K), or that recombination emission is important. We examined several different physical models for the origin of the X-ray enhancement. We find that turbulent mixing of cold cloud material with hot ambient material, compression or shock heating of a hot ambient medium, and charge exchange reactions between cloud atoms and ions in a hot ambient medium all lead to emission that is too faint. In addition, shock heating in a cool or warm medium leads to emission that is too soft (for reasonable cloud speeds). We find that magnetic reconnection could plausibly power the observed X-ray emission, but resistive magnetohydrodynamical simulations are needed to test this hypothesis. If magnetic reconnection is responsible for the X-ray enhancement, the observed spectral properties could potentially constrain the magnetic field in the vicinity of the Magellanic Stream.
We investigate the convective stability of two popular types of model of the gas distribution in the hot Galactic halo. We first consider models in which the halo density and temperature decrease exponentially with height above the disk. These halo m
odels were created to account for the fact that, on some sight lines, the halos X-ray emission lines and absorption lines yield different temperatures, implying that the halo is non-isothermal. We show that the hot gas in these exponential models is convectively unstable if $gamma<3/2$, where $gamma$ is the ratio of the temperature and density scale heights. Using published measurements of $gamma$ and its uncertainty, we use Bayes Theorem to infer posterior probability distributions for $gamma$, and hence the probability that the halo is convectively unstable for different sight lines. We find that, if these exponential models are good descriptions of the hot halo gas, at least in the first few kiloparsecs from the plane, the hot halo is reasonably likely to be convectively unstable on two of the three sight lines for which scale height information is available. We also consider more extended models of the halo. While isothermal halo models are convectively stable if the density decreases with distance from the Galaxy, a model of an extended adiabatic halo in hydrostatic equilibrium with the Galaxys dark matter is on the boundary between stability and instability. However, we find that radiative cooling may perturb this model in the direction of convective instability. If the Galactic halo is indeed convectively unstable, this would argue in favor of supernova activity in the Galactic disk contributing to the heating the hot halo gas.
We present measurements of the Galactic halos X-ray emission for 110 XMM-Newton sight lines, selected to minimize contamination from solar wind charge exchange emission. We detect emission from few million degree gas on ~4/5 of our sight lines. The t
emperature is fairly uniform (median = 2.22e6 K, interquartile range = 0.63e6 K), while the emission measure and intrinsic 0.5--2.0 keV surface brightness vary by over an order of magnitude (~(0.4-7)e-3 cm^-6 pc and ~(0.5-7)e-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1 deg^-2, respectively, with median detections of 1.9e-3 cm^-6 pc and 1.5e-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1 deg^-2, respectively). The high-latitude sky contains a patchy distribution of few million degree gas. This gas exhibits a general increase in emission measure toward the inner Galaxy in the southern Galactic hemisphere. However, there is no tendency for our observed emission measures to decrease with increasing Galactic latitude, contrary to what is expected for a disk-like halo morphology. The measured temperatures, brightnesses, and spatial distributions of the gas can be used to place constraints on models for the dominant heating sources of the halo. We provide some discussion of such heating sources, but defer comparisons between the observations and detailed models to a later paper.
In order to determine if the material ablated from high-velocity clouds (HVCs) is a significant source of low-velocity high ions (C IV, N V, and O VI) such as those found in the Galactic halo, we simulate the hydrodynamics of the gas and the time-dep
endent ionization evolution of its carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen ions. Our suite of simulations examines the ablation of warm material from clouds of various sizes, densities, and velocities as they pass through the hot Galactic halo. The ablated material mixes with the environmental gas, producing an intermediate-temperature mixture that is rich in high ions and that slows to the speed of the surrounding gas. We find that the slow mixed material is a significant source of the low-velocity O VI that is observed in the halo, as it can account for at least ~1/3 of the observed O VI column density. Hence, any complete model of the high ions in the halo should include the contribution to the O VI from ablated HVC material. However, such material is unlikely to be a major source of the observed C IV, presumably because the observed C IV is affected by photoionization, which our models do not include. We discuss a composite model that includes contributions from HVCs, supernova remnants, a cooling Galactic fountain, and photoionization by an external radiation field. By design, this model matches the observed O VI column density. This model can also account for most or all of the observed C IV, but only half of the observed N V.
We present hydrodynamic simulations of high-velocity clouds (HVCs) traveling through the hot, tenuous medium in the Galactic halo. A suite of models was created using the FLASH hydrodynamics code, sampling various cloud sizes, densities, and velociti
es. In all cases, the cloud-halo interaction ablates material from the clouds. The ablated material falls behind the clouds, where it mixes with the ambient medium to produce intermediate-temperature gas, some of which radiatively cools to less than 10,000 K. Using a non-equilibrium ionization (NEI) algorithm, we track the ionization levels of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the gas throughout the simulation period. We present observation-related predictions, including the expected H I and high ion (C IV, N V, and O VI) column densities on sight lines through the clouds as functions of evolutionary time and off-center distance. The predicted column densities overlap those observed for Complex C. The observations are best matched by clouds that have interacted with the Galactic environment for tens to hundreds of megayears. Given the large distances across which the clouds would travel during such time, our results are consistent with Complex C having an extragalactic origin. The destruction of HVCs is also of interest; the smallest cloud (initial mass approx 120 Msun) lost most of its mass during the simulation period (60 Myr), while the largest cloud (initial mass approx 4e5 Msun) remained largely intact, although deformed, during its simulation period (240 Myr).
We compare the predictions of three physical models for the origin of the hot halo gas with the observed halo X-ray emission, derived from 26 high-latitude XMM-Newton observations of the soft X-ray background between $l=120degr$ and $l=240degr$. Thes
e observations were chosen from a much larger set of observations as they are expected to be the least contaminated by solar wind charge exchange emission. We characterize the halo emission in the XMM-Newton band with a single-temperature plasma model. We find that the observed halo temperature is fairly constant across the sky (~1.8e6-2.3e6 K), whereas the halo emission measure varies by an order of magnitude (~0.0005-0.006 cm^-6 pc). When we compare our observations with the model predictions, we find that most of the hot gas observed with XMM-Newton does not reside in isolated extraplanar supernova remnants -- this model predicts emission an order of magnitude too faint. A model of a supernova-driven interstellar medium, including the flow of hot gas from the disk into the halo in a galactic fountain, gives good agreement with the observed 0.4-2.0 keV surface brightness. This model overpredicts the halo X-ray temperature by a factor of ~2, but there are a several possible explanations for this discrepancy. We therefore conclude that a major (possibly dominant) contributor to the halo X-ray emission observed with XMM-Newton is a fountain of hot gas driven into the halo by disk supernovae. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the extended hot halo of accreted material predicted by disk galaxy formation models also contributes to the emission.
