The X-ray Background from the Warm Gas of the Galactic Halo

Abstract

Within the framework of the hierarchical scenario of galaxy formation, spiral galaxies like our own Galaxy are still growing at present. This opens a possi- bility that one might be able to see X-ray galactic halos from gravitationally heated gas with temperatures of 10 6 K as a result of bremsstrahlung. An interesting issue is whether the X-ray background produced by the warm gas in the halo of our Galaxy is detectable. We present a simple estimate of the strength and spectrum of the X-ray background from the Galactic halo and compare with the recent find- ings of a spatially variable soft X-ray component seen towards the north Galactic polar cap by Kuntz et al. (2001). It is shown that a good agreement, regardless of cosmological models, can be achieved if the gas fraction is as low as 0.01. This requirement seems to be consistent with the extrapolated result from a num- ber of independent observational and theoretical constraints established for groups and clusters of galaxies. In particular, the expected soft X-ray background from the warm gas of the Galactic halo is comparable to, or even exceeds that produced by the warm-hot gas in massive groups, and it may constitute the major source of contamination in the search for missing baryons through the detection of their soft X-ray emission, unless we can work out a way to properly remove the X-ray background (e.g., from anisotropy) from the halo of our Galaxy.