We compare the predictions of three physical models for the origin of the hot
halo gas with the observed halo X-ray emission, derived from 26 high-latitude
XMM-Newton observations of the soft X-ray background between l=120\degr and
l=240\degr. These observations were chosen from a much larger set of
observations as they are expected to be the least contaminated by solar wind
charge exchange emission. We characterize the halo emission in the XMM-Newton
band with a single-temperature plasma model. We find that the observed halo
temperature is fairly constant across the sky (~1.8e6-2.3e6 K), whereas the
halo emission measure varies by an order of magnitude (~0.0005-0.006 cm^-6 pc).
When we compare our observations with the model predictions, we find that most
of the hot gas observed with XMM-Newton does not reside in isolated extraplanar
supernova remnants -- this model predicts emission an order of magnitude too
faint. A model of a supernova-driven interstellar medium, including the flow of
hot gas from the disk into the halo in a galactic fountain, gives good
agreement with the observed 0.4-2.0 keV surface brightness. This model
overpredicts the halo X-ray temperature by a factor of ~2, but there are a
several possible explanations for this discrepancy. We therefore conclude that
a major (possibly dominant) contributor to the halo X-ray emission observed
with XMM-Newton is a fountain of hot gas driven into the halo by disk
supernovae. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the extended hot
halo of accreted material predicted by disk galaxy formation models also
contributes to the emission.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. New version accepted for publication in ApJ.
Changes include new section discussing systematic errors (Section 3.2),
improved method for characterizing our model spectra (4.2.2), changes to
discussion of other observations (5.1). Note that we can no longer rule out
possibility that extended hot halo of accreted material contributes to
observed halo emission (see 5.2.1
