English

A Panchromatic Study of the X-ray Binary Population in NGC 300 on Sub-Galactic Scales

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2024-05-01 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

The population-wide properties and demographics of extragalactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) correlate with the star formation rates (SFRs), stellar masses (MM_{\star}), and environmental factors (such as metallicity, ZZ) of their host galaxy. Although there is evidence that XRB scaling relations (LXL_X/SFR for high mass XRBs [HMXBs] and LXL_X/MM_{\star} for low mass XRBs [LMXBs]) may depend on metallicity and stellar age across large samples of XRB-hosting galaxies, disentangling the effects of metallicity and stellar age from stochastic effects, particularly on subgalactic scales, remains a challenge. We use archival X-ray through IR observations of the nearby galaxy NGC 300 to self-consistently model the broadband spectral energy distribution and examine radial trends in its XRB population. We measure a current (<<100 Myr) SFR of 0.18±\pm0.08 MM_{\odot} yr1^{-1} and MM_{\star}= (2.150.14+0.26)×109(2.15^{+0.26}_{-0.14})\times10^9 MM_{\odot}. Although we measure a metallicity gradient and radially resolved star formation histories that are consistent with the literature, there is a clear excess in the number of X-ray sources below 1037\sim10^{37} erg s1^{-1} that are likely a mix of variable XRBs and additional background AGN. When we compare the subgalactic LXL_X/SFR ratios as a function of ZZ to the galaxy-integrated LXL_X-SFR-ZZ relationships from the literature, we find that only the regions hosting the youngest (\lesssim30 Myr) HMXBs agree with predictions, hinting at time evolution of the LXL_X-SFR-ZZ relationship.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.19129,
  title  = {A Panchromatic Study of the X-ray Binary Population in NGC 300 on Sub-Galactic Scales},
  author = {Breanna A. Binder and Rosalie Williams and Jacob Payne and Michael Eracleous and Alexander Belles and Benjamin F. Williams},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.19129},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted to AAS Journals; 22 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables