Resolving the Origin of the Diffuse Soft X-ray Background

Abstract

The ubiquitous diffuse soft (1/4 keV) X-ray background was one of the earliest discoveries of X-ray astronomy. At least some of the emission may arise from charge exchange between solar wind ions and neutral atoms in the heliosphere, but no detailed models have been fit to the available data. Here we report on a new model for charge exchange in the solar wind, which when combined with a diffuse hot plasma component filling the Local Cavity provides a good fit to the only available high-resolution soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectra using plausible parameters for the solar wind. The implied hot plasma component is in pressure equilibrium with the local cloud that surrounds the solar system, creating for the first time a self-consistent picture of the local interstellar medium.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Updated Atomic Data and Calculations for X-ray Spectroscopy
• Chandra Observations of the "Dark" Moon and Geocoronal Solar-Wind Charge Transfer
• OVII and OVIII line emission in the diffuse soft X-ray background: heliospheric and galactic contributions
• The solar wind charge-transfer X-ray emission in the 1/4 keV energy range: inferences on Local Bubble hot gas at low Z
• Observations of Diffuse EUV Emission with the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS)

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• Spectral Modeling of the Charge-Exchange X-ray Emission from M82
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• XMM-Newton and Suzaku X-ray Shadowing Measurements of the Solar Wind Charge Exchange, Local Bubble, and Galactic Halo Emission
• The hot circumgalactic medium of the Milky-Way: new insights from XMM-Newton observations
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• Suzaku Detection of Solar Wind Charge Exchange Emission from a Variety of Highly-ionized Ions in an Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection
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• XMM-Newton Measurement of the Galactic Halo X-ray Emission using a Compact Shadowing Cloud
• Detection of an Unidentified Soft X-ray Emission Feature in NGC 5548
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• Charge exchange, from the sky to the laboratory: A method to determine state-selective cross-sections for improved modeling
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• Studying the multi-phase interstellar medium in the Large Magellanic Cloud with SRG/eROSITA -- I. Analysis of diffuse X-ray emission
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