A large scale height galactic component of the diffuse 2-60 keV background

摘要

The diffuse 2-60 keV X-ray background has a galactic component clearly detectable by its strong variation with both galactic latitude and longitude. This galactic component is typically 10 percent of the extragalactic background toward the galactic center, half that strong toward the anticenter, and extrapolated to a few percent of the extragalactic background toward the galactic poles. It is acceptably modeled by a finite radius emission disk with a scale height of several kiloparsecs. The averaged galactic spectrum is best fitted by a thermal spectrum of kT about 9 keV, a spectrum much softer than the about 40 keV spectrum of the extragalactic component. The most likely source of this emission is low luminosity stars with large scale heights such as subdwarfs. Inverse Compton emission from GeV electrons on the microwave background contributes only a fraction of the galactic component unless the local cosmic ray electron spectrum and intensity are atypical.