X-Ray Spectral Properties of Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries in Nearby Galaxies

By J. Irwin, A. Athey, J. Bregman. 2002

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have investigated the X-ray spectral properties of a collection of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) within a sample of 15 nearby early-type galaxies using proprietary and archival data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. We find that the spectrum of the sum of the sources in a given galaxy is remarkably similar from galaxy to galaxy when only sources with X-ray luminosities less than 1039 ergs s-1 (0.3-10 keV) are considered. Fitting these lower luminosity sources in all galaxies simultaneously with a power-law model led to a best-fit power-law exponent of Γ = 1.56 ± 0.02 (90% confidence), and using a thermal bremsstrahlung model yielded kTbrem = 7.3 ± 0.3 keV. This is the tightest constraint to date on the spectral properties of LMXBs in external galaxies. The spectral properties of the LMXBs do not vary with galactic radius out to three effective radii. There is also no apparent difference between the spectral properties of LMXBs that reside within globular clusters and those that do not. We demonstrate how the uniformity of the spectral properties of LMXBs can lead to more accurate determinations of the temperature and metallicity of the hot gas in galaxies that have comparable amounts of X-ray emission from hot gas and LMXBs. Although few in number in any given galaxy, sources with luminosities of (1-2) × 1039 ergs s-1 are present in 10 of the galaxies. The spectra of these luminous sources are softer than the spectra of the rest of the sources and are consistent with the spectra of Galactic black hole X-ray binary candidates when they are in their very high state. The spatial distribution of these sources is much flatter than the optical light distribution, suggesting that a significant portion of them must reside within globular clusters. The simplest explanation of these sources is that they are ~10-15 M☉ black holes accreting near their Eddington limit. The spectra of these sources are very different from those of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) that have been found within spiral galaxies, suggesting that the two populations of X-ray-luminous objects have different formation mechanisms. The number of sources with apparent luminosities above 2 × 1039 ergs s-1 when determined using the distance of the galaxy is equal to the number of expected background active galactic nuclei and thus appears not to be associated with the galaxy, indicating that very luminous sources are absent or very rare in early-type galaxies. The lack of ULXs within elliptical galaxies strengthens the argument that ULXs are associated with recent star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a162faea6f2c3a613ab17b3bc637057a3d640d14

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. G. Fabbiano
2. R. Soria
3. H. Feng
4. Dong-Woo Kim
5. B. Boroson
6. M. Miller
7. E. Colbert
8. A. Tennant

In Instrumentation

1. G. Fabbiano
2. E. Colbert
3. H. Feng
4. M. Miller
5. M. Gilfanov
6. R. Soria
7. Dong-Woo Kim
8. R. Sunyaev

Citations in the corpus

• The Ultraluminous X-Ray Source Population from the Chandra Archive of Galaxies (2004, result): “This result is consistent with the sample of elliptical galaxies analyzed by Irwin et al. (2003).”
• X-ray luminosity function of faint point sources in the Milky Way (2005, background): “…> 1036 erg s−1) ∼40a ∼90b a Emissivity in the 0.5–2 keV band extrapolated from 2–10 keV assuming a power-law spectrum of photon index Γ = 1.56, as typical of LMXBs with 1036 erg s−1 < Lx < 1039 erg s−1 (Irwin et al. 2003). b The quoted 2–10 keV emissivity for LMXBs represents an average over…”
• Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, background): “It was even suggested (Irwin et al. 2003, 2004) that all ULX candidates in ellipticals with apparentLX > 2 × 1039 erg s−1 could be dismissed as background or foreground sources.”
• Intermediate - mass black holes (2003, background): “Pioneering work by Irwin et al. (2003) suggests, in fact, that ULXs in elliptical galaxies may have harder spectra than their counterparts in spirals.”
• X-Ray Luminosity Function and Total Luminosity of Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries in Early-Type Galaxies (2003, background): “The spectral properties for sources with different LX are remarkably similar in NGC 1316 (KF03) and also in a large sample of early type galaxies (Irwin et al. 2003); all these spectra tend to be rather hard.”
• REVISITING WITH CHANDRA THE SCALING RELATIONS OF THE X-RAY EMISSION COMPONENTS (BINARIES, NUCLEI, AND HOT GAS) OF EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “The X-ray spectra of LMXBs have been studied previously (e.g., Irwin et al. 2003; Kim & Fabbiano 2003).”