Are magnetic hot stars intrinsic X-ray sources?
Abstract
Context: X-ray surveys carried out with the Einstein and ROSAT satellites have resulted in rather unexpected detections of X-ray emission from late B-type and early A-type stars. These stars possess neither winds like early-type stars nor convective envelopes as late-type stars, so that the origin and production mechanism of this X-emission is unclear.
Aims: We investigate whether the presence of large magnetic fields is related to the observed X-ray emission.
Methods: We carried out Chandra high-angular resolution observations of a sample of late B-type and A-type stars with measured magnetic fields in the range from 0.2-17 kG. Out of the selected 10 sample stars, 6 objects had been previously detected as X-ray sources, some of them, however, with high positional uncertainty and a low signal-to-noise ratio, while 4 of our sample stars do have large magnetic fields but no previous detections of X-ray emission.
Results: Our Chandra data confirm all previous ROSAT detections with an extremely high significance, and the limits of the offsets between X-ray and optical positions are greatly improved. In particular,
Conclusions: . The pure existence of a magnetic field of kiloGauss strength on a late B-type or A-type star is therefore not necessarily a prerequisite for finding X-ray emission among these stars. Understanding the observed X-ray emission from Babcock's star is a challenge for observational and theoretical astrophysics.
- Publication:
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Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- April 2007
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0703524
- Bibcode:
- 2007A&A...465..493C
- Keywords:
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- stars: early-type;
- stars: magnetic fields;
- stars: activity;
- X-ray: stars;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- accepted by A&