X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies – I. High-mass X-ray binaries

By S. Mineo, M. Gilfanov, R. Sunyaev. 2011

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Based on a homogeneous set of X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet observations from Chandra, Spitzer, GALEX and 2MASS archives, we study populations of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in a sample of 29 nearby star-forming galaxies and their relation with the star formation rate (SFR). In agreement with previous results, we find that HMXBs are a good tracer of the recent star formation activity in the host galaxy and their collective luminosity and number scale with the SFR, in particular, LX � 2.6·10 39 ×SFR. However, the scaling relations still bear a rather large dispersion of rms � 0.4 dex, which we believe is of a physical origin. We present the catalog of 1057 X-ray sources detected within the D25 ellipse for galaxies of our sample and construct the average X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of HMXBs with substantially improved statistical accuracy and better control of systematic effects than achieved in previous studies. The XLF follows a power law with slope of 1.6 in the log(LX) � 35 40 luminosity range with a moderately significant evidence for a break or cut-off at LX � 10 40 erg/s. As before, we did not find any features at the Eddington limit for a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. We discuss implications of our results for the theory of binary evolution. In particular we estimate the fraction of compact objects that once upon their lifetime experienced an X-ray active phase powered by accretion from a high mass companion and obtain a rather large number, fX � 0.2 ×(0.1 Myr/τX) (τX is the life time of the X-ray active phase). This is � 4 orders of magnitude more frequent than in LMXBs. We also derive constrains on the mass distribution of the secondary star in HMXBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd428b107c1902ca9c11204f7b281c74bb03151a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. R. Hickox
3. M. Volonteri
4. L. Hernquist
5. A. Ferrara
6. P. Madau
7. A. Mesinger
8. Volker Springel

In Instrumentation

1. D. M. Alexander
2. R. Hickox
3. M. Volonteri
4. A. Mesinger
5. A. Goulding
6. Mara Salvato
7. C. Jones
8. W. Forman

Citations in the corpus

• Inferring the astrophysics of reionization and cosmic dawn from galaxy luminosity functions and the 21-cm signal (2018, methodology): “Our new value is motivated by the theoretical HMXB models of Fragos et al. (2013), whereas previously we used the empirical scalings of Mineo et al. (2012) obtained from local star forming galaxies.”
• Charting the parameter space of the global 21-cm signal (2016, methodology): “This relation is based on observations of nearby starburst galaxies and XRBs (Grimm et al. 2003; Gilfanov et al. 2004; Mineo et al. 2012), and the standard normalization for XRBs (with fX = 1) includes an order-ofmagnitude increase in this ratio at the low metallicity expected for high-redshift…”
• High-mass X-ray binaries in the Milky Way (2013, methodology): “Therefore indirect methods, such as the construction of X-ray luminosity functions (LF), are needed to study of properties of populations of sources located in different regions of a galaxy (see, e.g., Gilfanov, 2004; Mineo et al., 2012a).”
• X-RAY BINARY EVOLUTION ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2012, background): “…(Boroson et al. 2011), log(LX,LMXBs[2−10keV]/M∗) (Lehmer et al. 2010), log(LX,HMXBs[2−10keV]/SFR) (Lehmer et al. 2010), and log(LX,HMXBs[0.3−8keV]/SFR) (Mineo et al. 2012a),µ j andσ j for j = 5,7 are the observed values and the associated errors at z∼ 0.13,z∼ 0.38, andz∼ 0.78 for log(LX…”
• Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “The hot-gas component can be up-to LX ≈ 1041–1042 erg s−1 from galaxies (e.g. Boroson et al. 2011; Mineo et al. 2012b) and can be as high as LX ≈ 1044–1045 erg s−1 in the cores of massive galaxy clusters (e.g. Stanek et al. 2006; Ebeling et al. 2010).”
• Signatures of X-rays in the early Universe (2012, background): “Mineo et al. (2012) find a factor of 2–3 intrinsic scatter in this relation for their sample of star-forming galaxies6, while other studies in different bands have estimates which are also within a factor of few of this value (e.g. Gilfanov et al. 2004; Ranalli et al. 2003; Persic et al. 2004;…”
• X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies - II. Hot interstellar medium (2012, background): “However, as it was first noticed by Bogdán & Gilfanov (2010) and Mineo et al. (2012), the scale in the LX−M relation for LMXBs appears to depend on the age of the stellar population, the LX/M ratio being smaller in younger stellar environments.”
• Radiation Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn: X-Rays from Compact Binaries (2016, background): “Typical absorbing columns of 3 × 1021 cm−2 have been reported for HMXBs in nearby starforming galaxies by Mineo et al. (2012).”
• Evidence for heavy-seed origin of early supermassive black holes from a z ≈ 10 X-ray quasar (2023, methodology): “This relationship is robust and has been calibrated for local[52] and for distant galaxies[53, 54].”
• Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, result): “A very similar result was also found by Grimm et al. (2003), Swartz et al. (2004), and Mineo et al. (2011).”