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Issue A&A
Volume 448, Number 3, March IV 2006
Page(s) 873 - 880
Section Extragalactic astronomy
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20053744

A&A 448, 873-880 (2006)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053744

An INTEGRAL hard X-ray survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud

D. Götz1, S. Mereghetti1, D. Merlini1, 2, L. Sidoli1 and T. Belloni3

1  INAF - Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
    e-mail: diego@iasf-milano.inaf.it
2  Dipartimento di Fisica - Università degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy
3  INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via E. Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, Italy

(Received 1 July 2005 / Accepted 27 October 2005 )

Abstract
Two observation campaigns in 2003 and 2004 with the INTEGRAL satellite have provided the first sensitive survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud with an imaging instrument in the hard X-ray range (15 keV-10 MeV). The high energy flux and long-term variability of the black hole candidate LMC X-1 was measured for the first time without contamination by the nearby (~25$^{\prime}$) young pulsar PSR B0540-69. We studied the accreting pulsar LMC X-4 by constraining the size of the hard X-ray emitting region ($\leq$3 $\times$ 1010 cm) from analysis of its eclipses and by measuring its spin period (13.497 $\pm$ 0.005 s) in the 20-40 keV band. As it was in a soft state during the first observation and possibly in an extremely low state in the second one, LMC X-3 was not detected. Thanks to the large field of view of the IBIS instrument, we could also study other sources falling serendipitously in the observed sky region around the LMC: the Galactic low mass X-ray binary EXO 0748-676, the accreting pulsar SMC X-1 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Active Galactic Nucleus IRAS 04575-7537. In addition we discovered five new hard X-ray sources, two of which most likely belong to the LMC.


Key words: gamma-rays: observations -- pulsars: individual: PSR B0540-69 -- X-rays: binaries -- X-rays: galaxies -- Magellanic Clouds

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© ESO 2006


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