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Suzaku Investigation of Hard X-Ray Emission Associated with the Galactic Center Region

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Suzaku Investigation of Hard X-Ray Emission Associated with the Galactic Center Region Suzaku Investigation of Hard X-ray Emission Associated with the Galactic Center Region Ken-ichi Tamura Department of Physics Graduate School of Science University of Tokyo December 19, 2007 Abstract In the center region of our Galaxy, the intense di®use X-ray emission exists. The emission has been observed as X-ray spectra from a hot plasma with a temperature of 108 K, and the mechanism of production has been still a mystery over the past two decade from the discovery. The X-ray observatory, Suzaku, carries the X-ray CCD cameras, XIS, with good energy resolutions and the Hard X-ray Detector, HXD, with high energy band up to several hundreds keV, and therefore, has a large advantage to solve the mystery. Especially, with HXD-PIN which is a component of HXD , we will be able to obtain hard X-ray spectra of the Galactic center di®use emission if we can estimate the contamination from the hard X-ray sources in the FOV. Hence, we have performed the in-orbit calibrations of the angular response and developed the new method to estimate the contamination. We have performed the mapping observations for the Galactic center region with 35 pointing and the total exposure of 1 Msec. Both XIS and HXD-PIN have detected strong X-ray emissions in all the observations. From the detailed XIS analysis, we have shown that the shapes of the XIS spectra are uniform everywhere. And then, we have con¯rmed the distribution of the surface brightness extracted from the XIS spectra is consistent with that of Fe line in the hot plasma. For the HXD-PIN data, we have estimated the contamination from the hard X-ray source in the detected hard X-ray fluxes and shown that signi¯cant hard X-ray fluxes remain in entire the region. And then, we have analyzed the XIS and HXD-PIN wide-band spectra to show that the spectra can not be explained by only the thermal emissions and the power-law component exists certainly. Finally, we have shown that the distribution of the thermal and non-thermal emissions have strong correlation and suggested that both emissions are radiated form the same origin. Contents 1 Introduction 5 2 Review 7 2.1 Overview of the Galactic Center Region . 7 2.2 Past X-ray Observations of the Galactic Center Region . 9 2.2.1 Ginga results . 9 2.2.2 ASCA results . 10 2.2.3 Superposition of Dim Point Sources . 10 2.3 Non-thermal Hard Tail Associated with the Milky Way . 12 2.4 Suzaku results . 13 3 The X-Ray Observatory Suzaku 15 3.1 The Suzaku Spacecraft . 15 3.2 X-Ray Telescope (XRT) . 17 3.3 X-Ray Imaging Spectrometers (XIS) . 22 3.4 Hard X-Ray Detector (HXD) . 26 3.4.1 Overview . 26 3.4.2 HXD-PIN Detectors . 31 3.4.3 In-Orbit Calibration . 32 4 Angular Response of HXD-PIN and A New Method for Flux Estima- tion 34 4.1 Angular Response of HXD-PIN . 34 4.1.1 Fine-Collimator . 34 4.1.2 Angular Response . 35 4.2 In-Orbit Calibration of the Angular Response . 35 4.2.1 Calibration of Light Axes . 35 4.2.2 Fine Tuning of the Angular Response . 42 4.3 New Method for Flux Estimation . 43 5 Suzaku Observations 50 5.1 Overview . 50 5.2 Strategy of the observations . 50 2 5.2.1 Determination of the temperature of the hot plasma . 51 5.2.2 Monitoring bright transient hard X-ray sources . 51 5.2.3 Observations of molecular clouds . 52 5.2.4 Mapping observations . 52 5.3 Status of the Observations . 52 6 Suzaku Data Analysis and Results 55 6.1 XIS Data Analysis . 55 6.1.1 Data Reduction . 55 6.1.2 Imaging analysis . 55 6.1.3 Analysis of the XIS spectra . 59 6.1.4 Surface Brightness Distribution of Soft X-ray . 67 6.2 HXD-PIN Data Analysis . 70 6.2.1 Data Reduction . 70 6.2.2 NXB Modeling . 70 6.2.3 Spectral Analysis . 71 6.2.4 Spectral Fitting with a Power-law Model . 72 6.3 Estimation of Contaminations from Known Hard X-ray Sources . 85 6.3.1 Known Hard X-ray Sources in the Galactic Center Region . 85 6.3.2 Flux Estimation of the Hard X-ray Sources with IBIS . 86 6.3.3 Spectral Estimation of the Hard X-ray Sources with XIS . 95 6.3.4 Flux Estimation of "1E 1740.7-2942" . 96 6.4 Analysis of the Hard X-ray di®use emission . 106 6.4.1 Class A . 106 6.4.2 Class B . 109 6.4.3 Class C . 116 6.4.4 Distribution of Hard X-ray Emission . 116 7 Discussion 120 7.1 Brief Summary of the Observational Results . 120 7.2 Uncertainties of the Hard X-ray Di®use Emission . 120 7.3 Contributions from the Dim Point Sources . 122 7.4 Interpretation of the Hard X-ray Di®use Emission . 123 8 Conclusion 125 A Image of Galactic Center Region with Swift 126 B Individual Observational Data 128 B.1 The XIS spectra and the IBIS fluxes of the bright point sources . 128 B.2 The XIS spectra ¯tted with the template model of the west region . 130 3 B.3 The HXD-PIN spectra subtracted the contaminations from the known hard X-ray sources. 136 B.4 The XIS and HXD-PIN Unfolded Spectra . 141 4 Chapter 1 Introduction The intense iron line emission concentrating in the center of our Galaxy has been observed in X-ray band with previous X-ray satellites. This emission often interpreted as di®use hot plasma with a high temperature of » 6 keV being con¯ned in the galactic center region. Despite of repeated observations and numerous e®orts to solve the origin of this di®use hot plasma, over the past two decades from the discovery of the emission, both "How the hot plasma has been created?" and "Why the hot plasma can stay there?" have been mysteries. In addition, di®use X-ray emissions from the Galactic plane and bulge have been also observed. From these regions, non-thermal di®use emissions have also been discovered. However, no conclusions of the emission mechanisms have been obtained. From energetics point of view, the origin of hot plasma con¯ned in the Galactic Center Region is of great importance in modern high energy astronomy. Recently, a symptom of the non-thermal emission has been reporeted from the analysis of the XIS data, (e.g. Koyama et al. 2007), which is the CCD sensor onboard Suzaku. Suzaku is the ¯fth Japanese X-ray observatory which has two detector systems. One is XIS, instruments with X-ray CCD cameras, which covers the energy range of 0.2{12 keV. The other detector, HXD, is a collimated detector which features the narrowest ¯eld- of-view and the lowest background among recent collimator-type hard X-ray detectors. These features give large advantages to observations for the Galactic center region in which many hard X-ray sources, giant molecular cloud and possible the Galactic center di®use emission are mixed with each other. The objective of this thesis is to establish the existence of non-thermal X-ray di®use emission in the galactic center region, and to show how the thermal and the non-thermal emissions are correlated. In Chapter 2, we review the previous works and the current understanding on the Galactic di®use emission. Chapter 3 gives a brief description of the Suzaku satellite and its detector systems used for our observations. In Chapter 4, we explain the in-orbit calibrations of the angular response which is essential for the region containing a lot of hard X-ray sources. In Chapter 5, the overview and strategy on the observations of the Galactic center region are described. In Chapter 6, we show the 5 analysis and result of the XIS and HXD data, and the estimation of the contaminations from the hard X-ray sources to the HXD fluxes. In Chapter 7, we discuss the Suzaku results. Finally, conclusions of this thesis is given in Chapter 8. 6 Chapter 2 Review 2.1 Overview of the Galactic Center Region The Galactic center is the closest galactic nucleus of a spiral galaxy, and hence numer- ous observations have been performed on this region. The central half kiloparsec region around the Galactic Center is an extremely complex region containing a variety of astro- physical activities: cold and warm molecular clouds, star cluster/formation, supernova remnants (SNRs), and HII regions, to name a few. Therefore, this region have been attracting many researchers in wide-band wavelengths, from radio to very high energy gamma-ray. Figure 2.1: Velocity integrated (-200 to 200 km s¡1) CS J=1-0 emission in the Galactic center region, obtained with 45 m telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory (Tsuboi et al. 1999). The data have been convolved with a 60" Gaussian. The structures of the molecular clouds, the fountainhead of star formation activities and hot plasmas eventuated, have been mapped with CO and CS lines in the radio wave- length. As shown in ¯gure 2.1, it is clear that they show a strong concentration around the center of Galaxy as a form of giant molecular clouds involved in a continuous ridge extended along the Galactic plane. The compact and luminous nuclear region produces »5{10% of our Galaxy's infrared and Lyman continuum luminosities and accounts for 7 Figure 2.2: A mosaic image obtained with a survey of Spitzer Space Tele- scope/IRAC observations of the central 2 £ 1.5 degrees (265 £ 200 pc) of the Galaxy at 3-8 ¹m.
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