Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2007-10-14
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
29 pages with 7 figures and 3 pages included. Accepted to ApJ
Scientific paper
10.1086/524369
We report the detection of 10 new X-ray filaments using the data from the {\sl Chandra} X-ray satellite for the inner $6^{\prime}$ ($\sim 15$ parsec) around the Galactic center (GC). All these X-ray filaments are characterized by non-thermal energy spectra, and most of them have point-like features at their heads that point inward. Fitted with the simple absorbed power-law model, the measured X-ray flux from an individual filament in the 2-10 keV band is $\sim 2.8\times10^{-14}$ to $10^{-13}$ ergs cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ and the absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity is $\sim 10^{32}-10^{33}$ ergs s$^{-1}$ at a presumed distance of 8 kpc to the GC. We speculate the origin(s) of these filaments by morphologies and by comparing their X-ray images with the corresponding radio and infrared images. On the basis of combined information available, we suspect that these X-ray filaments might be pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) associated with pulsars of age $10^3 \sim 3\times 10^5$ yr. The fact that most of the filament tails point outward may further suggest a high velocity wind blowing away form the GC.
Lou Yu-Qing
Lu F. J.
Yuan Tengkai
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