Modeling the thermal diffuse soft and hard x-ray emission in M17

Abstract

We present numerical models of very young wind driven superbubbles. The parameters chosen for the simulations correspond to the particular case of the M17 nebula, but are appropriate for any young superbubble in which the wind sources have not completely dispersed their parental cloud. From the simulations, we computed the diffuse emission in the soft ([0.5-1.5] keV) and hard ([1.5-5] keV) X-ray bands. The total luminosity in our simulations agrees with the observations of Hyodo et al., about two orders of magnitude below the prediction of the standard model of Weaver et al.. The difference with respect to the standard (adiabatic) model is the inclusion of radiative cooling, which is still important in such young bubbles. We show that for this type of object the diffuse hard X-ray luminosity is significant compared to that of soft X-rays, contributing as much as 10% of the total luminosity, in contrast with more evolved bubbles where the hard X-ray emission is indeed negligible, being at least four orders of magnitude lower than the soft X-ray emission. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..