Can I read Near-infrared counterparts to Chandra X-ray sources toward the Galactic Center. II. Discovery of Wolf-Rayet stars and O supergiants on EtoBox?

Near-infrared counterparts to Chandra X-ray sources toward the Galactic Center. II. Discovery of Wolf-Rayet stars and O supergiants by Mauerhan, Jon C.; Muno, Michael P.; Morris, Mark R.; Stolovy, Susan R.; Cotera, Angela S. is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Near-infrared counterparts to Chandra X-ray sources toward the Galactic Center. II. Discovery of Wolf-Rayet stars and O supergiants about?

We present new identifications of infrared counterparts to the population of hard X-ray sources near the Galactic center detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. We have confirmed 16 new massive stellar counterparts to the X-ray population, including nitrogen-type (WN) and carbon-type (WC) Wolf-Rayet stars, and O supergiants. For the majority of these sources, the X-ray photometry is consistent with thermal emission from plasma having temperatures in the range of kT=1-8 keV or non-thermal emission having power-law indices in the range of -1<gamma<3, and X-ray luminosities in the range of Lx~1e32-1e34 erg/s. Several sources have exhibited X-ray variability of several factors between separate observations. The X-ray properties are not a ubiquitous feature of single massive stars but are typical of massive binaries, in which the high-energy emission is generated by the collision of supersonic winds, or by accretion onto a compact companion. However, the possibility of intrinsic hard X-ray generation from single stars cannot be completely ruled out. The spectral energy distributions of these sources exhibit significant infrared excess, attributable to free-free emission from ionized

Author

Mauerhan, Jon C.; Muno, Michael P.; Morris, Mark R.; Stolovy, Susan R.; Cotera, Angela S.

Published

2009

Language

EN