On the Absence of Non-thermal X-Ray Emission around Runaway O Stars

Creator(s)

Jesus A. Toalá, Academcy Sinica
Lidia M. Oskinova, University of Postdam
Richard Ignace, East Tennessee State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2017

Description

Theoretical models predict that the compressed interstellar medium around runaway O stars can produce high-energy non-thermal diffuse emission, in particular, non-thermal X-ray and γ-ray emission. So far, detection of non-thermal X-ray emission was claimed for only one runaway star, AE Aur. We present a search for non-thermal diffuse X-ray emission from bow shocks using archived XMM-Newton observations for a clean sample of six well-determined runaway O stars. We find that none of these objects present diffuse X-ray emission associated with their bow shocks, similarly to previous X-ray studies toward ζ Oph and BD+43°3654. We carefully investigated multi-wavelength observations of AE Aur and could not confirm previous findings of non-thermal X-rays. We conclude that so far there is no clear evidence of non-thermal extended emission in bow shocks around runaway O stars.

Copyright Statement

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Citation Information

Toalá, Jesus A.; Oskinova, Lidia M.; and Ignace, Richard. 2017. On the Absence of Non-thermal X-Ray Emission around Runaway O Stars. Astrophysical Journal. Vol.838(2). https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa667c ISSN: 0004-637X