Letter to the Editor

Faint hard X-ray sources in the Galactic Center region: Supernova ejecta fragments population

AF Ioffe Institute for Physics and Technology, St. Petersburg 194021, Russia

Corresponding author: byk@astro.ioffe.ru

Received: 2 May 2003
Accepted: 3 September 2003

Abstract

Long Chandra observations of field in the Galactic Center (GC) region reported by Muno et al.  ([CITE]) have revealed a population of about 2000 hard faint X-ray sources limited by luminosities . We show that fast moving knots (FMKs) of supernovae ejecta could comprise a sizeable fraction of the sources. Each supernova event can produce hundreds of FMKs. The presence of ~3 supernova remnants of age ∼10³ in the GC region could provide the required number of the FMKs. Simulated X-ray spectra of the FMKs contain both thermal and nonthermal components. The nonthermal spectra are power-laws with hard photon indexes and prominent lines of some metals (e.g. Fe). The – distribution and the hardness ratios of the FMKs in the GC region are consistent with the Chandra findings. Spatial distribution of the FMKs in the GC region should appear as an ensemble of coherent shell and jet-like structures of a few arcmin-scale.