2006/06/20 by Jianfeng Wu, J. F. Wu, Shuang‐Nan Zhang +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Center (category theory) #Galactic Center #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Luminosity #Molecular cloud #Monte Carlo method #Physics #Point source #Power law #Sky #Star formation #Stars #Statistics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1009-9271/7/1/05
published as Chin.J.Astron.Astrophys.7:81-90,2007 · 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted by Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics
arxiv created 2006/06/20 · openalex publication_date 2007/02/01 · arxiv updated 2014/10/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The Chandra Galactic Center Survey detected ∼800 X-ray point-like sources in the 2° × 0.8° sky region around the Galactic Center. We study the spatial and luminosity distributions of these sources according to their spectral properties. Fourteen bright sources detected are used to fit jointly an absorbed power-law model, from which the power-law photon index is determined to be ∼2.5. Assuming that all other sources have the same power-law form, the relation between hardness ratio and HI column density N H is used to estimate the N H values for all sources. Monte Carlo simulations show that these sources are more likely concentrated in the Galactic center region, rather than distributed throughout the Galactic disk. We also find that the luminosities of the sources are positively correlated with their HI column densities, i.e., a more luminous source has a higher HI column density. From this relation, we suggest that the X-ray luminosity comes from the interaction between an isolated old neutron star and interstellar medium (mainly dense molecular clouds). Using the standard Bondi accretion theory and the statistical information of molecular clouds in the Galactic center, we confirm this positive correlation and calculate the luminosity range in this scenario, which is consistent with the observation (10 32 −10 35 erg s −1 ).