ENERGY FEEDBACK FROM X-RAY BINARIES IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- The Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
X-ray photons, because of their long mean-free paths, can easily escape the galactic environments where they are produced, and interact at long distances with the intergalactic medium, potentially having a significant contribution to the heating and reionization of the early universe. The two most important sources of X-ray photons in the universe are active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and X-ray binaries (XRBs). In this Letter we use results from detailed, large scale population synthesis simulations to study the energy feedback of XRBs, from the first galaxies (z ∼ 20) until today. We estimate that X-ray emission from XRBs dominates over AGN at z ∼> 6-8. The shape of the spectral energy distribution of the emission from XRBs shows little change with redshift, in contrast to its normalization which evolves by ∼4 orders of magnitude, primarily due to the evolution of the cosmic star-formation rate. However, the metallicity and the mean stellar age of a given XRB population affect significantly its X-ray output. Specifically, the X-ray luminosity from high-mass XRBs per unit of star-formation rate varies an order of magnitude going from solar metallicity to less than 10% solar, and the X-ray luminosity from low-mass XRBs per unit of stellar mass peaks at an age of ∼300 Myr and then decreases gradually at later times, showing little variation for mean stellar ages ∼> 3 Gyr. Finally, we provide analytical and tabulated prescriptions for the energy output of XRBs, that can be directly incorporated in cosmological simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 22215425
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 776, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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