Discovery of K-Shell Emission Lines of Neutral Atoms in the Galactic Center Region

The K-shell emission line of neutral irons from the Galactic center (GC) region is one of the key for the structure and activity of the GC. The origin is still open question, but possibly due either to X-ray radiation or to electron bombarding to neutral atoms. To address this issue, we analyzed the Suzaku X-ray spectrum from the GC region of intense neutral iron line emission, and report on the discovery of Kalpha lines of neutral argon, calcium, chrome, and manganese atoms. The equivalent widths of these Kalpha lines indicate that the metal abundances in the GC region should be ~1.6 and ~4 of solar value, depending on the X-ray and the electron origins, respectively. On the other hand, the metal abundances in the hot plasma in the GC region are found to be ~1-2 solar. These results favor that the origin of the neutral Kalpha lines are due to X-ray irradiation.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ (Vol.62, No.2, pp.423--429

Formation of intermediate-mass black holes in circumnuclear regions of galaxies

Recent high-resolution X-ray imaging studies have discovered possible candidates of intermediate-mass black holes with masses of M_\bullet \sim 10^{2-4} \MO in circumnuclear regions of many (disk) galaxies. It is known that a large number of massive stars are formed in a circumnuclear giant H {\sc ii} region. Therefore, we propose that continual merger of compact remnants left from these massive stars is responsible for the formation of such an intermediate-mass black hole within a timescale of $\sim 10^9$ years. A necessary condition is that several hundreds of massive stars are formed in a compact region with a radius of a few pc.Comment: 11 pages, PASJ in pres

Suzaku Observation Adjacent to the South End of the Radio Arc

Suzaku observed the Galactic center region near the Radio Arc at ~20' southeast of Sagittarius A*.In the 18'x18' field of view, we found four distinct X-ray sources: a bright star and a diffuse source associated with the star clusters in the soft band (0.5-2.0 keV), a small clump in a higher energy band (4-6 keV), and a peculiar clump in the 6.4 keV line band.The latter two clumps are located at the south end of the Radio Arc. This paper reports on the results, and discusses the origin of these X-ray sources, with a particular emphasis on small clumps.Comment: 16 pages, 9figures, accepted for publication in PASJ (Vol.61 No.3

An X-Ray Face-on View of the Sgr B Molecular Clouds Observed with Suzaku

We present a new methodology to derive the positions of the Sgr B molecular clouds (MCs) along the line of sight, as an application study of the Galactic center diffuse X-rays (GCDX). The GCDX is composed of hot plasma emission of about 7 keV and 1 keV temperatures, and non-thermal continuum emission including the 6.4 keV line from neutral irons. The former, the Galactic center plasma emission (GCPE), is uniformly distributed over 1 degree in longitude, while the latter is clumpy emission produced by Thomson scattering and fluorescence from MCs irradiated by external X-rays (the X-ray reflection nebula emission: XRNE). We examined the Suzaku X-ray spectra of the GCPE and XRNE near to the Sgr B MC complex, and found that the spectra suffer from two different absorptions of N_H (Abs1) >10^23 H cm^-2 and N_H (Abs2) ~6 x 10^22 H cm^-2. Abs1 is proportional to the 6.4 keV-line flux, and hence is due to the MCs, while Abs2 is typical of interstellar absorption toward the Galactic center. Assuming that the GCPE plasma is spherically-extended around Sgr A* with a uniform density and the same angular distribution of the two temperature components, we quantitatively estimated the line-of-sight positions of the MCs from the flux ratio the GCPE spectrum suffered by Abs1 and that with no Abs1. The results suggest that the Sgr B MCs are located at the near side of Sgr A* in the GCPE.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ (Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan

Peculiar Chemical Abundances in the Starburst Galaxy M82 and Hypernova Nucleosynthesis

X-ray observations have shown that the chemical abundance in the starburst galaxy M82 is quite rich in Si and S compared with oxygen. Such an abundance pattern cannot be explained with any combination of conventional Type I and II supernova yields. Also the energy to heavy element mass ratio of the observed hot plasma is much higher than the value resulted from normal supernovae. We calculate explosive nucleosynthesis in core-collapse hypernovae and show that the abundance pattern and the large ratio between the energy and the heavy element mass can be explained with the hypernova nucleosynthesis. Such hypernova explosions are expected to occur for stars more massive than >~ 20-25 Msun, and likely dominating the starburst, because the age after the starburst in M82 is estimated to be as short as ~ 10^6 - 10^7 yr. We also investigate pair-instability supernovae (~ 150-300 Msun) and conclude that the energy to heavy element mass ratio in these supernovae is too small to explain the observation.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, To appear in the Astrophysical Journal 578, 200

Radiation-Induced Degradation Mechanism of X-ray SOI Pixel Sensors with Pinned Depleted Diode Structure

The X-ray Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) pixel sensor named XRPIX has been developed for the future X-ray astronomical satellite FORCE. XRPIX is capable of a wide-band X-ray imaging spectroscopy from below 1 keV to a few tens of keV with a good timing resolution of a few tens of $\mu$s. However, it had a major issue with its radiation tolerance to the total ionizing dose (TID) effect because of its thick buried oxide layer due to the SOI structure. Although new device structures introducing pinned depleted diodes dramatically improved radiation tolerance, it remained unknown how radiation effects degrade the sensor performance. Thus, this paper reports the results of a study of the degradation mechanism of XRPIX due to radiation using device simulations. In particular, mechanisms of increases in dark current and readout noise are investigated by simulation, taking into account the positive charge accumulation in the oxide layer and the increase in the surface recombination velocity at the interface between the sensor layer and the oxide layer. As a result, it is found that the depletion of the buried p-well at the interface increases the dark current, and that the increase in the sense-node capacitance increases the readout noise.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE-TN