A Deep NuSTAR Survey of M31: Compact object types in our Nearest Neighbor Galaxy
Abstract
X-ray binaries (XRBs) trace young and old stellar populations in galaxies, and thus star formation rate and star formation history/stellar mass. X-ray emission from XRBs may be responsible for significant amounts of heating of the early Intergalactic Medium at Cosmic Dawn and may also play a significant role in reionization. Until recently, the E>10 keV (hard X-ray) emission from these populations could only be studied for XRBs in our own galaxy, where it is often difficult to measure accurate distances and thus luminosities. We have observed M31 in 4 NuSTAR fields for a total exposure of 1.4 Ms, covering the young stellar population in a swath of the disk (within the footprint of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) Survey) and older populations in the bulge. We detected more than 100 sources in the 4-25 keV band, where hard band (12-25 keV) emission has allowed us to discriminate between black holes and neutron stars in different accretion states. The luminosity function of the hard band detected sources are compared to Swift/BAT and INTEGRAL-derived luminosity functions of the Milky Way population, which reveals an excess of luminous sources in M31 when correcting for star formation rate and stellar mass.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #16
- Pub Date:
- August 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017HEAD...1620505H