Observations of X-ray-bright Dusty Elliptical Galaxies

Details Observations of X-ray-bright Dusty Elliptical Galaxies Observations of X-ray-bright Dusty Elliptical Galaxies

Sep 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004sptz.prop.3619k&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #3619

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Scientific paper

We propose to observe 5 nearby elliptical galaxies with a large amount of dust and hot plasma, i.e. IR-bright and X-ray-bright ellipticals. We also observe 2 IR-bright but X-ray-faint ellipticals. The object of this proposal is to challenge problems on the origin and the fate of excessive contents of the dust in the X-ray-bright ellipticals where the dust is expected to be easily destroyed through sputtering by plasma ions. How can such a large amount of the dust survive? Does the dust really interact with the plasma? Spatially-resolved imaging are crucial for our study; the MIPS has a great advantage over ISO and IRAS on the imaging capability. We create color maps with the MIPS 3 bands and compare them with X-ray images to search for the evidence on the collisional heating of the dust by the plasma electrons. If the dust and the plasma really coexist and affect each other, some correlation between the X-ray brightness and the dust temperature distribution as well as the mid-IR excess should be observed in our sample. The Spitzer capabilities would enable us for the first time to obtain direct evidence on the interaction between the dust and the plasma in the elliptical galaxies, if any. Such evidence would strongly supports external process scenario, such as accretion during galaxy interaction, for the dust origin to replenish the galaxies against the sputtering destruction. On the other hand, if we find no evidence at all, we have to think about special mechanism to separate the dust from the plasma so that the dust can escape the bombardments by the plasma electrons and ions. In either case, the X-ray-faint ellipticals in our sample would play an important role since a large fraction of the dust is really unaffected by the plasma and thus can survive in these galaxies. The IRS spectra provide us information on the dust properties, such as presence (or not) of PAH and silicate features, and might be helpful to discuss whether the remaining dust is of the internal origin or not.

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