Deep hard X-ray survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

Results of the deep survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) obtained with the INTEGRAL observatory are presented. The long exposure (~7 Ms) allowed us to detect 21 sources in this sky region: ten belonging to the LMC itself (7 HMXBs, 2 PSRs, 1 LMXB), six of extragalactic origin and three belonging to other galaxies in the Local Group - the Milky Way (2 sources) and Small Magellanic Cloud (1 source). Four of the 21 sources were newly discovered hard X-ray sources, in addition to IGR J05414-6858 reported earlier; two of them were identified with extragalactic objects. We report also for the first time the detection of hard X-ray emission from the Crab-like pulsar PSR J0537-6910 and the identification of the hard X-ray source IGR J05305-6559 with the high-mass X-ray binary EXO 053109-6609. © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.