A Hard X-ray View of Starburst Galaxies with NuSTAR
Abstract
We are observing six nearby starburst galaxies jointly with NuSTAR and the soft (0.3-10 keV) X-ray imaging telescopes Chandra and XMM-Newton. These observations are providing crucial new input on disentangling the key mechanisms that dominate the hard (>10 keV) X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies, as well as the balance between accretion onto supermassive black holes and that onto stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars. I will highlight recently published results on the nuclear region of NGC 253 (Lehmer et al. 2013), which demonstrated that the hard X-ray emission is dominated by X-ray binaries (stellar mass black holes and neutron stars) and not an accreting supermassive black hole. I will present additional results from NGC 253 including the first measurements of the accretion states of the brightest X-ray binaries in a starburst galaxy based on their hard X-ray spectra and new constraints on the inverse Compton emission associated with starburst outflows. I will describe the NuSTAR, Chandra, and XMM-Newton observations of two additional galaxies (M83 and Arp 299) that have been recently completed, as well as plans for the remaining three galaxies (M82, NGC 3310, and NGC 3256).
- Publication:
-
The X-ray Universe 2014
- Pub Date:
- July 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014xru..confE.271L