Fe K line complex in the nuclear region of NGC 253

Abstract

A bright, nearby edge-on starburst galaxy NGC 253 was studied using the Suzaku, XMM and Chandra X-ray observatories. We detected with Suzaku and XMM complex line structure of Fe K, which is resolved into three lines (Fe I at 6.4 keV, Fe XXV at 6.7 keV and Fe XXVI at 7.0 keV) around the center of NGC 253. Especially, the Fe I and Fe XXVI lines are the first clear detections, with a significance of >99.99 % and 99.89 % estimated by a Monte Carlo procedure. Imaging spectroscopy with Chandra revealed that the emission is distributed in ~60 arcsec^2 region around the nucleus, which suggests that the source is not only the buried AGN. The flux of highly ionized Fe lines can be explained by the accumulation of 10-1000 supernova remnants that are the result of high starforming activity, while the Fe I line flux is consistent with the fluorescent line emission expected with the molecular clouds in the region.

Accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (4)

• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury
• Iron line and diffuse hard X-ray emission from the starburst galaxy M82
• A deep X-ray observation of M82 with XMM-Newton
• Modeling the Galactic CV Distribution for the ChaMPlane Survey

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Active Galactic Nuclei, Neutrinos, and Interacting Cosmic Rays in NGC 253 & NGC 1068
• Discovery of the recombining plasma in the south of the Galactic center; a relic of the past Galactic center activity?
• Spatially Resolving a Starburst Galaxy at Hard X-ray Energies: NuSTAR, Chandra, AND VLBA Observations of NGC 253
• Fast and Furious: Shock Heated Gas as the Origin of Spatially Resolved Hard X-ray Emission in the Central 5 kpc of the Galaxy Merger NGC 6240
• A Focused, Hard X-ray Look at Arp 299 with NuSTAR
• X-ray emission from the nuclear region of Arp 220
• NuSTAR and Chandra Insight into the Nature of the 3-40 keV Nuclear Emission in NGC 253
• A study of X-ray emission of galaxies hosting molecular outflows (MOX sample)
• An X-ray study of the galactic-scale starburst-driven outflow in NGC 253
• Spatially Resolved [FeII] 1.64 μm Emission in NGC 5135. Clues for Understanding the Origin of the Hard X-rays in Luminous Infrared Galaxies
• Fe K lines in the nuclear region of M82
• A Chandra observation of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy IRAS 19254--7245 (the Superantennae): X-ray emission from the Compton-thick AGN and the diffuse starburst
• Iron emission line from the spiral galaxy M101