Context.
Previous
Chandra
observations of the
Abell 3411
-3412 merging galaxy cluster system revealed an outbound bullet-like sub-cluster in the northern part and many surface brightness edges at the ...southern periphery, where multiple diffuse sources are also reported from radio observations. Notably, a southeastern radio relic associated with fossil plasma from a radio galaxy and with a detected X-ray edge provides direct evidence of shock re-acceleration. The properties of the reported surface brightness features have yet to be constrained from a thermodynamic viewpoint.
Aims.
We use the
XMM-Newton
and
Suzaku
observations of Abell 3411-3412 to reveal the thermodynamical nature of the previously reported re-acceleration site and other X-ray surface brightness edges. We also aim to investigate the temperature profile in the low-density outskirts with
Suzaku
data.
Methods.
We performed both imaging and spectral analysis to measure the density jump and the temperature jump across multiple known X-ray surface brightness discontinuities. We present a new method to calibrate the vignetting function and spectral model of the
XMM-Newton
soft proton background. Archival
Chandra
,
Suzaku
, and ROSAT data are used to estimate the cosmic X-ray background and Galactic foreground levels with improved accuracy compared to standard blank sky spectra.
Results.
At the southeastern edge, temperature jumps revealed by both
XMM-Newton
and
Suzaku
point to a ℳ ∼ 1.2 shock, which agrees with the previous result from surface brightness fits with
Chandra
. The low Mach number supports the re-acceleration scenario at this shock front. The southern edge shows a more complex scenario, where a shock and the presence of stripped cold material may coincide. There is no evidence for a bow shock in front of the northwestern “bullet” sub-cluster. The
Suzaku
temperature profiles in the southern low-density regions are marginally higher than the typical relaxed cluster temperature profile. The measured value
kT
500
= 4.84 ± 0.04 ± 0.19 keV with
XMM-Newton
and
kT
500
= 5.17 ± 0.07 ± 0.13 keV with
Suzaku
are significantly lower than previously inferred from
Chandra
.
Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bounded structures in the Universe dominated by dark matter. We review the observational appearance and physical models of plasma structures in ...clusters of galaxies. Bubbles of relativistic plasma which are inflated by supermassive black holes of AGNs, cooling and heating of the gas, large scale plasma shocks, cold fronts, non-thermal halos and relics are observed in clusters. These constituents are reflecting both the formation history and the dynamical properties of clusters of galaxies. We discuss X-ray spectroscopy as a tool to study the metal enrichment in clusters and fine spectroscopy of Fe X-ray lines as a powerful diagnostics of both the turbulent plasma motions and the energetics of the non-thermal electron populations. The knowledge of the complex dynamical and feedback processes is necessary to understand the energy and matter balance as well as to constrain the role of the non-thermal components of clusters.
Context. The chemical yields of supernovae and the metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) are not well understood. The hot gas in clusters of galaxies has been enriched with metals ...originating from billions of supernovae and provides a fair sample of large-scale metal enrichment in the Universe. High-resolution X-ray spectra of clusters of galaxies provide a unique way of measuring abundances in the hot intracluster medium (ICM). The abundance measurements can provide constraints on the supernova explosion mechanism and the initial-mass function of the stellar population. This paper introduces the CHEmical Enrichment RGS Sample (CHEERS), which is a sample of 44 bright local giant ellipticals, groups, and clusters of galaxies observed with XMM-Newton. Aims. The CHEERS project aims to provide the most accurate set of cluster abundances measured in X-rays using this sample. This paper focuses specifically on the abundance measurements of O and Fe using the reflection grating spectrometer (RGS) on board XMM-Newton. We aim to thoroughly discuss the cluster to cluster abundance variations and the robustness of the measurements. Methods. We have selected the CHEERS sample such that the oxygen abundance in each cluster is detected at a level of at least 5σ in the RGS. The dispersive nature of the RGS limits the sample to clusters with sharp surface brightness peaks. The deep exposures and the size of the sample allow us to quantify the intrinsic scatter and the systematic uncertainties in the abundances using spectral modeling techniques. Results. We report the oxygen and iron abundances as measured with RGS in the core regions of all 44 clusters in the sample. We do not find a significant trend of O/Fe as a function of cluster temperature, but we do find an intrinsic scatter in the O and Fe abundances from cluster to cluster. The level of systematic uncertainties in the O/Fe ratio is estimated to be around 20−30%, while the systematic uncertainties in the absolute O and Fe abundances can be as high as 50% in extreme cases. Thanks to the high statistics of the observations, we were able to identify and correct a systematic bias in the oxygen abundance determination that was due to an inaccuracy in the spectral model. Conclusions. The lack of dependence of O/Fe on temperature suggests that the enrichment of the ICM does not depend on cluster mass and that most of the enrichment likely took place before the ICM was formed. We find that the observed scatter in the O/Fe ratio is due to a combination of intrinsic scatter in the source and systematic uncertainties in the spectral fitting, which we are unable to separate. The astrophysical source of intrinsic scatter could be due to differences in active galactic nucleus activity and ongoing star formation in the brightest cluster galaxy. The systematic scatter is due to uncertainties in the spatial line broadening, absorption column, multi-temperature structure, and the thermal plasma models.
Far-ultraviolet (FUV) observations have revealed transition temperature gas (TTG; log T(K)~ 5), located in the lower Galactic halo and in high-velocity clouds. However, the corresponding X-ray ...absorption has so far remained mostly undetected. In order to make an improvement in this respect in Galactic X-ray absorption studies, we accumulated very deep (~3 Ms) spectra of the blazar PKS 2155-304 obtained with the spectrometers RGS1, RGS2, LETG/HRC, and LETG/ACIS-S and studied the absorption lines due to the intervening Galactic components. The very high quality of the data and coverage of important wavelengths with at least two independent instruments allowed us to reliably detect 10 Galactic lines with better than 99.75% confidence. We discovered significant absorption from blended O iv transitions 1s–2p 2S (22.571 Å), 1s–2p 2P (22.741 Å), and 1s–2p 2D (22.777 Å), and from the O v transition 1s–2p (22.370 Å) from TTG at log T(K)=5.2 ± 0.1. A joint X-ray and FUV analysis indicated that photoionisation is negligible for this component and that the gas is in a cooling transition phase. However, the temperature is high enough that the column density ratio N(O iv)/N(O v) is not significantly different from that in collisional ionisation equilibrium (CIE). Under CIE we obtained NOIV = 3.6 ± 2.0 ×1015 cm-2, corresponding to NH = 1.0 ± 0.5 ×1019(Z⊙/ZTTG) cm-2.
Charge exchange (CX) has emerged in X-ray emission modeling as a significant process that must be considered in many astrophysical environments-particularly comets. Comets host an interaction between ...solar wind ions and cometary neutrals to promote solar wind charge exchange (SWCX). X-ray observatories provide astronomers and astrophysicists with data for many X-ray emitting comets that are impossible to accurately model without reliable CX data. Here, we utilize a streamlined set of computer programs that incorporate the multi-channel Landau-Zener theory and a cascade model for X-ray emission to generate cross sections and X-ray line ratios for a variety of bare and non-bare ion single electron capture (SEC) collisions. Namely, we consider collisions between the solar wind constituent bare and H-like ions of C, N, O, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, and Si and the cometary neutrals H2O, CO, CO2, OH, and O. To exemplify the application of this data, we model the X-ray emission of Comet C/2000 WM1 (linear) using the CX package in SPEX and find excellent agreement with observations made with the XMM-Newton RGS detector. Our analyses show that the X-ray intensity is dominated by SWCX with H, while H2O plays a secondary role. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that CX cross sections have been implemented into a X-ray spectral fitting package to determine the H to H2O ratio in cometary atmospheres. The CX data sets are incorporated into the modeling packages SPEX and Kronos.
Abstract
Obscuring winds driven away from active supermassive black holes are rarely seen due to their transient nature. They have been observed with multiwavelength observations in a few Seyfert 1 ...galaxies and one broad absorption line radio-quiet quasar so far. An X-ray obscuration event in MR 2251-178 was caught in late-2020, which triggered multiwavelength (near-IR (NIR) to X-ray) observations targeting this radio-quiet quasar. In the X-ray band, the obscurer leads to a flux drop in the soft X-ray band from late-2020 to early-2021. X-ray obscuration events might have a quasi-period of two decades considering earlier events in 1980 and 1996. In the UV band, a forest of weak blueshifted absorption features emerged in the blue wing of Ly
α λ
1216 in late-2020. Our XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Hubble Space Telescope/COS observations are obtained simultaneously; hence, the transient X-ray obscuration event is expected to account for the UV outflow, although they are not necessarily caused by the same part of the wind. Both blueshifted and redshifted absorption features were found for He
i
λ
10830, but no previous NIR spectra are available for comparison. The X-ray observational features of MR 2251-178 shared similarities with some other type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with obscuring wind. However, observational features in the UV to NIR bands are distinctly different from those seen in other AGN with obscuring winds. A general understanding of the observational variety and the nature of obscuring wind is still lacking.
We present the analysis of XMM-Newtonand Swiftoptical-UV and X-ray observations of the Seyfert-1/QSO Mrk 509, part of an unprecedented multi-wavelength campaign, investigating the nuclear environment ...of this AGN. The XMM-Newtondata are from a series of 10 observations of about 60 ks each, spaced from each other by about 4 days, taken in Oct.-Nov. 2009. During our campaign, Mrk 509 was also observed with Swiftfor a period of about 100 days, monitoring the behaviour of the source before and after the XMM-Newtonobservations. With these data we have established the continuum spectrum in the optical-UV and X-ray bands and investigated its variability on the timescale of our campaign with a resolution time of a few days. In order to measure and model the continuum as far as possible into the UV, we also made use of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) cosmic origin spectrograph (COS) observations of Mrk 509 (part of our coordinated campaign) and of an archival Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) observation. We have found that in addition to an X-ray power-law, the spectrum displays soft X-ray excess emission below 2 keV, which interestingly varies in association with the thermal optical-UV emission from the accretion disc. The change in the X-ray power-law component flux (albeit smaller than that of the soft excess), on the other hand, is uncorrelated to the flux variability of the soft X-ray excess and the disc component on the probed timescale. The results of our simultaneous broad-band spectral and timing analysis suggest that, on a resolution time of a few days, the soft X-ray excess of Mrk 509 is produced by the Comptonisation of the thermal optical-UV photons from the accretion disc by a warm (0.2 keV) optically thick (τ ~ 17) corona surrounding the inner regions of the disc. This makes Mrk 509, with a black hole mass of about 1-3 × 108 M⊙, the highest mass known system to display such behaviour and origin for the soft X-ray excess.
The origin of the different spectral components present in the high energy (UV to X-rays/gamma-rays) spectra of Seyfert galaxies is still being debated a lot. The simultaneous UV to X-rays/gamma rays ...data obtained during the multiwavelength campaign on the bright Seyfert 1 Mrk 509 are used in this paper and tested against physically motivated broad band models. Mrk 509 was observed by XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL in October/November 2009, with one observation every four days for a total of ten observations. Each observation has been fitted with a realistic thermal Comptonization model for the continuum emission. In contrast, the hot corona has a more photon-starved geometry. The high temperature (~100 eV) of the soft-photon field entering and cooling it favors a localization of the hot corona in the inner flow. This soft-photon field could be part of the comptonized emission produced by the warm plasma. In this framework, the change in the geometry could explain most of the observed flux and spectral variability.
The well-established Type Ia remnant of Tycho's supernova (SN 1572) reveals discrepant ambient medium-density estimates based on either the measured dynamics or the X-ray emission properties. This ...discrepancy can potentially be solved by assuming that the supernova remnant (SNR) shock initially moved through a stellar wind bubble, but is currently evolving in the uniform interstellar medium with a relatively low density.
We investigate this scenario by combining hydrodynamical simulations of the wind-loss phase and the SNR evolution with a coupled X-ray emission model, which includes non-equilibrium ionization. For the explosion models we use the well-known W7 deflagration model and the delayed detonation model that was previously shown to provide good fits to the X-ray emission of Tycho's SNR.
Our simulations confirm that a uniform ambient density cannot simultaneously reproduce the dynamical and X-ray emission properties of Tycho. In contrast, models that considered that the remnant was evolving in a dense, but small, wind bubble reproduce reasonably well both the measured X-ray emission spectrum and the expansion parameter of Tycho's SNR. Finally, we discuss possible mass-loss scenarios in the context of single- and double-degenerate models which possibly could form such a small dense wind bubble.
The Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project (AGN STORM) on NGC 5548 in 2014 is one of the most intensive multiwavelength AGN monitoring campaigns ever. For most of the campaign, the ...emission-line variations followed changes in the continuum with a time lag, as expected. However, the lines varied independently of the observed UV-optical continuum during a 60-70 day "holiday," suggesting that unobserved changes to the ionizing continuum were present. To understand this remarkable phenomenon and to obtain an independent assessment of the ionizing continuum variations, we study the intrinsic absorption lines present in NGC 5548. We identify a novel cycle that reproduces the absorption line variability and thus identify the physics that allows the holiday to occur. In this cycle, variations in this obscurer's line-of-sight covering factor modify the soft X-ray continuum, changing the ionization of helium. Ionizing radiation produced by recombining helium then affects the level of ionization of some ions seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In particular, high-ionization species are affected by changes in the obscurer covering factor, which does not affect the optical or UV continuum, and thus appear as uncorrelated changes, a "holiday." It is likely that any other model that selectively changes the soft X-ray part of the continuum during the holiday can also explain the anomalous emission-line behavior observed.
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