David B. Henley

Comparing Suzaku and XMM-Newton Observations of the Soft X-Ray Background: Evidence for Solar Wind Charge Exchange Emission

We present an analysis of a pair of Suzaku spectra of the soft X-ray background (SXRB), obtained from pointings on and off a nearby shadowing filament in the southern Galactic hemisphere. Because of the different Galactic column densities in the two pointing directions, the observed emission from the Galactic halo has a different shape in the two spectra. We make use of this difference when modeling the spectra to separate the absorbed halo emission from the unabsorbed foreground emission from the Local Bubble (LB). The temperatures and emission measures we obtain are significantly different from those determined from an earlier analysis of XMM-Newton spectra from the same pointing directions. We attribute this difference to the presence of previously unrecognized solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) contamination in the XMM-Newton spectra, possibly due to a localized enhancement in the solar wind moving across the line of sight. Contemporaneous solar wind data from ACE show nothing unusual during the course of the XMM-Newton observations. Our results therefore suggest that simply examining contemporaneous solar wind data might be inadequate for determining if a spectrum of the SXRB is contaminated by SWCX emission. If our Suzaku spectra are not badly contaminated by SWCX emission, our best-fitting LB model gives a temperature of -->log (TLB/K) = 5.98?0.04+0.03 and a pressure of -->pLB/k = 13,100-16,100 cm?3 K. These values are lower than those obtained from other recent observations of the LB, suggesting the LB may not be isothermal and may not be in pressure equilibrium. Our halo modeling, meanwhile, suggests that neon may be enhanced relative to oxygen and iron, possibly because oxygen and iron are partly in dust.

The Origin of the Hot Gas in the Galactic Halo: Confronting Models with XMM-Newton Observations

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 = 120° and l = 240°. These 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 (~(1.8-2.4) × 106 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 (SN) remnants—this model predicts emission an order of magnitude too faint. A model of an SN-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 SNe. 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.

AN XMM-NEWTON SURVEY OF THE SOFT X-RAY BACKGROUND. III. THE GALACTIC HALO X-RAY EMISSION

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 temperature is fairly uniform (median = 2.22 ? 106 K, interquartile range = 0.63 ? 106 K), while the emission measure and intrinsic 0.5-2.0 keV surface brightness vary by over an order of magnitude (~(0.4-7) ? 10?3 cm?6 pc and ~(0.5-7) ? 10?12 erg cm?2 s?1 deg?2, respectively, with median detections of 1.9 ? 10?3 cm?6 pc and 1.5 ? 10?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.

CHANDRA X-RAY GRATING SPECTROMETRY OF η CARINAE NEAR X-RAY MINIMUM. I. VARIABILITY OF THE SULFUR AND SILICON EMISSION LINES

We reportonvariationsinimportant X-ray emissionlines ina seriesof Chandragrating spectra of the supermassive colliding wind binary starCar, including key phases around the X-ray minimum/periastron passage in 2003.5. The X-raysarisefromthecollisionof theslow,densewindofCarwiththefast,low-densitywindof anotherwisehidden companion star. The X-ray emission lines provide the only direct measure of the flow dynamics of the companions wind along the wind-wind collision zone. We concentrate here on the silicon and sulfur lines, which are the strongest and best-resolved lines in the X-ray spectra. Most of the line profiles can be adequately fit with symmetric Gaussians with little significant skewness. Both the silicon and sulfur lines show significant velocity shifts and correlated increases in line widths through the observations. The R = forbidden-to-intercombination ratio from the Si xiii and S xv triplets is near or above the low-density limit in all observations, suggesting that the line-forming region is >1.6 stellar radii from the companion star. We show that simple geometrical models cannot simultaneously fit both the observed centroid variations and changes in line width as a function of phase. We show that the observed profiles can be fitted with synthetic profiles with a reasonable model of the emissivity along the wind-wind collision boundary. Weusethisanalysistohelpconstrainthelineformationregionasafunctionof orbitalphase,andtheorbitalgeometry. Subject headingg stars: early-type — stars: individual (� Car) — X-rays: stars

An XMM-Newton Observation of the Local Bubble Using a Shadowing Filament in the Southern Galactic Hemisphere

We present an analysis of the X-ray spectrum of the Local Bubble, obtained by simultaneously analyzing spectra from two XMM-Newton pointings on and off an absorbing filament in the southern Galactic hemisphere (b ? -45?). We use the difference in the Galactic column density in these two directions to deduce the contributions of the unabsorbed foreground emission due to the Local Bubble, and the absorbed emission from the Galactic halo and the extragalactic background. We find the Local Bubble emission is consistent with emission from a plasma in collisional ionization equilibrium with a temperature log(TLB/K) = 6.06 and an emission measure ndl = 0.018 cm-6 pc. Our measured temperature is in good agreement with values obtained from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data, but is lower than that measured by other recent XMM-Newton observations of the Local Bubble, which find log(TLB/K) ? 6.2 (although for some of these observations it is possible that the foreground emission is contaminated by non-Local Bubble emission from Loop I). The higher temperature observed toward other directions is inconsistent with our data when combined with a FUSE measurement of the Galactic halo O VI intensity. This therefore suggests that the Local Bubble is thermally anisotropic. Our data are unable to rule out a nonequilibrium model in which the plasma is underionized. However, an overionized recombining plasma model, while observationally acceptable for certain densities and temperatures, generally gives an implausibly young age for the Local Bubble (6 ? 105 yr).

AN XMM-NEWTON SURVEY OF THE SOFT X-RAY BACKGROUND. I. THE O VII AND O VIII LINES BETWEEN l = 120° AND l = 240°

We present measurements of the soft X-ray background (SXRB) O VII and O VIII intensity between l = 120° and l = 240°, the first results of a survey of the SXRB using archival XMM-Newton observations. We do not restrict ourselves to blank-sky observations, but instead use as many observations as possible, removing bright or extended sources by hand if necessary. In an attempt to minimize contamination from near-Earth solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) emission, we remove times of high solar wind proton flux from the data. Without this filtering we are able to extract measurements from 586 XMM-Newton observations. With this filtering, ~1/2 of the observations are rendered unusable, and we are able to extract measurements from 303 observations. The oxygen intensities are typically ~0.5-10 photons cm–2 s–1 sr–1 (line units, L.U.) for O VII and ~0-5 L.U. for O VIII. The proton flux filtering does not systematically reduce the oxygen intensities measured from a given observation. However, the filtering does preferentially remove the observations with higher oxygen intensities. Our data set includes 69 directions with multiple observations, whose oxygen intensity variations can be used to constrain SWCX models. One observation exhibits an O VII enhancement of ~25 L.U. over two other observations of the same direction, although most SWCX enhancements are 4 L.U. for O VII and 2 L.U. for O VIII. We find no clear tendency for the O VII centroid to shift toward the forbidden line energy in observations with bright SWCX enhancements. There is also no universal association between enhanced SWCX emission and increased solar wind flux or the closeness of the sightline to the sub-solar region of the magnetosheath. After removing observations likely to be contaminated by heliospheric SWCX emission, we use our results to examine the Galactic halo. There is some scatter in the halo intensity about the predictions of a simple plane-parallel model, indicating a patchiness to the halo emission. The O VII/O VIII intensity ratio implies a halo temperature of ~2.0-2.5 × 106 K, in good agreement with previous studies.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HOT GAS IN THE GALACTIC HALO: TESTING GALACTIC FOUNTAIN MODELS' X-RAY EMISSION

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 for versions of the model with and without an interstellar magnetic field. We consider different reasons for the discrepancy between the model predictions and the observations. We find that taking into account overionization in cooled halo plasma, which could in principle boost the predicted X-ray emission, is unlikely in practice to bring the predictions in line with the observations. We also find that including thermal conduction, which would tend to increase the surface brightnesses of interfaces between hot and cold gas, would not overcome the surface brightness shortfall. However, charge exchange emission from such interfaces, not included in the current model, may be significant. The faintness of the model may also be due to the lack of cosmic ray driving, meaning that the model may underestimate the amount of material transported from the disk to the halo. In addition, an extended hot halo of accreted material may be important, by supplying hot electrons that could boost the emission of the material driven out from the disk. Additional model predictions are needed to test the relative importance of these processes in explaining the observed halo emission.

MODELING THE X-RAYS RESULTING FROM HIGH-VELOCITY CLOUDS

With the goal of understanding why X-rays have been reported near some high-velocity clouds, we perform detailed three-dimensional hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations of clouds interacting with environmental gas like that in the Galaxys thick disk/halo or the Magellanic Stream. We examine two scenarios. In the first, clouds travel fast enough to shock heat warm environmental gas. In this scenario, the X-ray productivity depends strongly on the speed of the cloud and the radiative cooling rate. In order to shock heat environmental gas to temperatures of ≥106 K, cloud speeds of ≥300 km s–1 are required. If cooling is quenched, then the shock-heated ambient gas is X-ray emissive, producing bright X-rays in the 1/4 keV band and some X-rays in the 3/4 keV band due to O VII and other ions. If, in contrast, the radiative cooling rate is similar to that of collisional ionizational equilibrium plasma with solar abundances, then the shocked gas is only mildly bright and for only about 1 Myr. The predicted count rates for the non-radiative case are bright enough to explain the count rate observed with XMM-Newton toward a Magellanic Stream cloud and some enhancement in the ROSAT 1/4 keV count rate toward Complex C, while the predicted count rates for the fully radiative case are not. In the second scenario, the clouds travel through and mix with hot ambient gas. The mixed zone can contain hot gas, but the hot portion of the mixed gas is not as bright as those from the shock-heating scenario.

XMM-NEWTON AND SUZAKU X-RAY SHADOWING MEASUREMENTS OF THE SOLAR WIND CHARGE EXCHANGE, LOCAL BUBBLE, AND GALACTIC HALO EMISSION

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-shadow 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.

SIMULATIONS OF HIGH-VELOCITY CLOUDS. II. ABLATION FROM HIGH-VELOCITY CLOUDS AS A SOURCE OF LOW-VELOCITY HIGH IONS

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-dependent 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.