658 research outputs found
Energy Feedback from X-ray Binaries in the Early Universe
X-ray photons, because of their long mean-free paths, can easily escape the
galactic environments where they are produced, and interact at long distances
with the inter-galactic medium, potentially having a significant contribution
to the heating and reionization of the early Universe. The two most important
sources of X-ray photons in the Universe are active galactic nuclei (AGN) and
X-ray binaries (XRBs). In this Letter we use results from detailed, large scale
population synthesis simulations to study the energy feedback of XRBs, from the
first galaxies (z~ 20) until today. We estimate that X-ray emission from XRBs
dominates over AGN at z>6-8. The shape of the spectral energy distribution of
the emission from XRBs shows little change with redshift, in contrast to its
normalization which evolves by ~4 orders of magnitude, primarily due to the
evolution of the cosmic star-formation rate. However, the metallicity and the
mean stellar age of a given XRB population affect significantly its X-ray
output. Specifically, the X-ray luminosity from high-mass XRBs per unit of
star-formation rate varies an order of magnitude going from solar metallicity
to less than 10% solar, and the X-ray luminosity from low-mass XRBs per unit of
stellar mass peaks at an age of ~300 Myr and then decreases gradually at later
times, showing little variation for mean stellar ages > 3 Gyr. Finally, we
provide analytical and tabulated prescriptions for the energy output of XRBs,
that can be directly incorporated in cosmological simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication to ApJ Letters, 6 pages, 2 figures, 2 table.
Significant changes to figure 2
Can the unresolved X-ray background be explained by emission from the optically-detected faint galaxies of the GOODS project?
The emission from individual X-ray sources in the Chandra Deep Fields and
XMM-Newton Lockman Hole shows that almost half of the hard X-ray background
above 6 keV is unresolved and implies the existence of a missing population of
heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN). We have stacked the 0.5-8 keV
X-ray emission from optical sources in the Great Observatories Origins Deep
Survey (GOODS; which covers the Chandra Deep Fields) to determine whether these
galaxies, which are individually undetected in X-rays, are hosting the
hypothesised missing AGN. In the 0.5-6 keV energy range the stacked-source
emission corresponds to the remaining 10-20 per cent of the total background --
the fraction that has not been resolved by Chandra. The spectrum of the stacked
emission is consistent with starburst activity or weak AGN emission. In the 6-8
keV band, we find that upper limits to the stacked X-ray intensity from the
GOODS galaxies are consistent with the ~40 per cent of the total background
that remains unresolved, but further selection refinement is required to
identify the X-ray sources and confirm their contribution.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in MNRA
On the Kauffman bracket skein module of the quaternionic manifold
We use recoupling theory to study the Kauffman bracket skein module of the
quaternionic manifold over Z[A,A^{-1}] localized by inverting all the
cyclotomic polynomials. We prove that the skein module is spanned by five
elements. Using the quantum invariants of these skein elements and the Z_2
homology of the manifold, we determine that they are linearly independent.Comment: corrected summation signs in figures 14, 15, 17. Other minor change
Pseudorandom Number Generators and the Square Site Percolation Threshold
A select collection of pseudorandom number generators is applied to a Monte
Carlo study of the two dimensional square site percolation model. A generator
suitable for high precision calculations is identified from an application
specific test of randomness. After extended computation and analysis, an
ostensibly reliable value of pc = 0.59274598(4) is obtained for the percolation
threshold.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Evidence for a constant IMF in early-type galaxies based on their X-ray binary populations
A number of recent studies have proposed that the stellar initial mass
function (IMF) of early type galaxies varies systematically as a function of
galaxy mass, with higher mass galaxies having bottom heavy IMFs. These bottom
heavy IMFs have more low-mass stars relative to the number of high mass stars,
and therefore naturally result in proportionally fewer neutron stars and black
holes. In this paper, we specifically predict the variation in the number of
black holes and neutron stars based on the power-law IMF variation required to
reproduce the observed mass-to-light ratio trends with galaxy mass. We then
test whether such variations are observed by studying the field low-mass X-ray
binary populations (LMXBs) of nearby early-type galaxies. In these binaries, a
neutron star or black hole accretes matter from a low-mass donor star. Their
number is therefore expected to scale with the number of black holes and
neutron stars present in a galaxy. We find that the number of LMXBs per K-band
light is similar among the galaxies in our sample. These data therefore
demonstrate the uniformity of the slope of the IMF from massive stars down to
those now dominating the K-band light, and are consistent with an invariant
IMF. Our results are inconsistent with an IMF which varies from a
Kroupa/Chabrier like IMF for low mass galaxies to a steep power-law IMF (with
slope =2.8) for high mass galaxies. We discuss how these observations
constrain the possible forms of the IMF variations and how future Chandra
observations can enable sharper tests of the IMF.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Ap
X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies - III. Calibration of the Lx-SFR relation up to redshift z1.3
We investigate the relation between total X-ray emission from star-forming
galaxies and their star formation activity. Using nearby late-type galaxies and
ULIRGs from Paper I and star-forming galaxies from Chandra Deep Fields, we
construct a sample of 66 galaxies spanning the redshift range z~0-1.3 and the
star-formation rate (SFR) range ~0.1-10^3 M_sun/yr. In agreement with previous
results, we find that the Lx-SFR relation is consistent with a linear law both
at z=0 and for the z=0.1-1.3 CDF galaxies, within the statistical accuracy of
~0.1 in the slope of the Lx-SFR relation. For the total sample, we find a
linear scaling relation Lx/SFR~(4.0\pm 0.4)x10^{39}(erg/s)/(Msun/yr), with a
scatter of ~0.4 dex. About ~2/3 of the 0.5-8 keV luminosity generated per unit
SFR is expected to be due to HMXBs. We find no statistically significant trends
in the mean Lx/SFR ratio with the redshift or star formation rate and constrain
the amplitude of its variations by <0.1-0.2 dex. These properties make X-ray
observations a powerful tool to measure the star formation rate in normal
star-forming galaxies that dominate the source counts at faint fluxes.Comment: 11 pages, 3 tables, 4 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS.
Substantial changes since the last version, including the authors lis
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