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S. Trudolyubov, O. Kotov, W. Priedhorsky, K. Borozdin (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA), K. Mason (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK), F. Cordova (University Of California, Riverside, USA)
We present the results of XMM-Newton survey of the northern part of the disk of M31. We report on the first unambiguous detection of the soft unresolved X-ray emission from the disk of M31. The unresolved emission follows the pattern of the spiral arms and can be traced up to distance of ~0.5 degree (~3.3 kpc at 760 kpc) from the center of the galaxy. The spectrum of the unresolved emission shows dominant soft thermal component which can be fitted with a ~0.3 keV optically thin thermal plasma emission models. We suggest that this diffuse soft X-ray component may represent hot diffuse gas in the spiral arms of M31. The local enhancements in brightness of the unresolved emission were found to be associated with regions of recent star formation.
The results of a spectral and timing analysis of the brightest sources are presented. We report the discovery of possible X-ray pulsations from the source XMMU J004415.8+413057 with a period of 197 s. The spectral and timing properties of XMMU J004415.8+413057 make it the first accreting X-ray pulsar candidate detected in M31. We discuss the results for individual sources with respect to their spectral class and the type of their counterparts at other wavelengths.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: tsp@nis.lanl.gov
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #3
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.