English

The dust-enshrouded microquasar candidate AX J1639.0-4642 = IGR J16393-4643

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v2

Abstract

We present a multiwavelength study of the field containing the unidentified X-ray source AX J1639.0-4642, discovered with the ASCA observatory and recently detected with the IBIS telescope, onboard the INTEGRAL satellite, dubbed IGR J16393-4643. The huge hydrogen column density towards the source, the hard spectral index in the 0.7-10 keV band and its flux variability suggest that the source is a High Mass X-ray Binary (HMXB) enshrouded by dust. Our search reveals the presence of a non-thermal radio counterpart within the X-ray error box. After a study of the broadband emission from X-rays to the radio domain, we propose that AX J1639.0-4642 is a dust-enshrouded Microquasar (MQ) candidate. In addition, the X-ray source is well within the 95% location contour of the unidentified gamma-ray source 3EG J1639-4702. The main properties of AX J1639.0-4642/3EG J1639-4702 are consistent with those of two other MQs previously proposed to display high-energy gamma-ray emission.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0401643,
  title  = {The dust-enshrouded microquasar candidate AX J1639.0-4642 = IGR J16393-4643},
  author = {J. A. Combi and M. Ribo and I. F. Mirabel and M. Sugizaki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0401643},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

7 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. Title and discussion on the possible NIR counterpart have been modified