X-ray polarization evidence for a 200-year-old flare of Sgr A

Frédéric Marin¹, Eugene Churazov^{2

3}, Ildar Khabibullin^{2

3

4}, Riccardo Ferrazzoli⁵, Laura Di Gesu⁶, Thibault Barnouin⁷, Alessandro Di Marco⁵, Riccardo Middei^{8

9}, Alexey Vikhlinin^{3

10}, Enrico Costa⁵, Paolo Soffitta⁵, Fabio Muleri⁵, Rashid Sunyaev^{2

3}, William Forman¹⁰, Ralph Kraft¹⁰, Stefano Bianchi¹¹, Immacolata Donnarumma⁶, Pierre-Olivier Petrucci¹², Teruaki Enoto¹³, Iván Agudo¹⁴, Lucio A Antonelli^{8

9}, Matteo Bachetti¹⁵, Luca Baldini^{16

17}, Wayne H Baumgartner¹⁸, Ronaldo Bellazzini¹⁶, Stephen D Bongiorno¹⁸, Raffaella Bonino^{19

20}, Alessandro Brez¹⁶, Niccolò Bucciantini^{21

22

23}, Fiamma Capitanio⁵, Simone Castellano¹⁶, Elisabetta Cavazzuti⁶, Chien-Ting Chen²⁴, Stefano Ciprini^{8

25}, Alessandra De Rosa⁵, Ettore Del Monte⁵, Niccolò Di Lalla²⁶, Victor Doroshenko²⁷, Michal Dovčiak²⁸, Steven R Ehlert¹⁸, Yuri Evangelista⁵, Sergio Fabiani⁵, Javier A Garcia²⁹, Shuichi Gunji³⁰, Kiyoshi Hayashida³¹, Jeremy Heyl³², Adam Ingram³³, Wataru Iwakiri^{34

35}, Svetlana G Jorstad^{36

37}, Philip Kaaret^{18

38}, Vladimir Karas²⁸, Takao Kitaguchi¹³, Jeffery J Kolodziejczak¹⁸, Henric Krawczynski³⁹, Fabio La Monaca⁵, Luca Latronico¹⁹, Ioannis Liodakis⁴⁰, Simone Maldera¹⁹, Alberto Manfreda¹⁶, Andrea Marinucci⁶, Alan P Marscher³⁶, Herman L Marshall⁴¹, Francesco Massaro^{19

20}, Giorgio Matt¹¹, Ikuyuki Mitsuishi⁴², Tsunefumi Mizuno⁴³, Michela Negro^{44

45

46}, C-Y Ng⁴⁷, Stephen L O'Dell¹⁸, Nicola Omodei²⁶, Chiara Oppedisano¹⁹, Alessandro Papitto⁹, George G Pavlov⁴⁸, Abel L Peirson²⁶, Matteo Perri^{8

9}, Melissa Pesce-Rollins¹⁶, Maura Pilia¹⁵, Andrea Possenti¹⁵, Juri Poutanen⁴⁹, Simonetta Puccetti⁸, Brian D Ramsey¹⁸, John Rankin⁵, Ajay Ratheesh⁵, Oliver J Roberts²⁴, Roger W Romani²⁶, Carmelo Sgrò¹⁶, Patrick Slane¹⁰, Gloria Spandre¹⁶, Doug Swartz²⁴, Toru Tamagawa¹³, Fabrizio Tavecchio⁵⁰, Roberto Taverna⁵¹, Yuzuru Tawara⁴², Allyn F Tennant¹⁸, Nicholas E Thomas¹⁸, Francesco Tombesi^{25

52

53}, Alessio Trois¹⁵, Sergey S Tsygankov⁴⁹, Roberto Turolla^{51

54}, Jacco Vink⁵⁵, Martin C Weisskopf¹⁸, Kinwah Wu⁵⁴, Fei Xie^{5

56}, Silvia Zane⁵⁴

Affiliations

¹ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, Strasbourg, France. frederic.marin@astro.unistra.fr.
² Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany.
³ Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
⁴ Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
⁵ INAF Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome, Italy.
⁶ ASI - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome, Italy.
⁷ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, Strasbourg, France.
⁸ Space Science Data Center, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome, Italy.
⁹ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Monte Porzio Catone, Italy.
¹⁰ Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹¹ Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.
¹² Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France.
¹³ RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Wako, Japan.
¹⁴ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC, Granada, Spain.
¹⁵ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Selargius, Italy.
¹⁶ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
¹⁷ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
¹⁸ NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA.
¹⁹ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino, Turin, Italy.
²⁰ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Torino, Turin, Italy.
²¹ INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy.
²² Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
²³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
²⁴ Science and Technology Institute, Universities Space Research Association, Huntsville, AL, USA.
²⁵ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
²⁶ Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
²⁷ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
²⁸ Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague 4, Czech Republic.
²⁹ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁰ Yamagata University, Yamagata-shi, Japan.
³¹ Osaka University, Suita, Japan.
³² University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³³ School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
³⁴ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan.
³⁵ International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan.
³⁶ Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
³⁷ Department of Astrophysics, St. Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia.
³⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
³⁹ Physics Department and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
⁴⁰ Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁴¹ MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴² Graduate School of Science, Division of Particle and Astrophysical Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
⁴³ Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan.
⁴⁴ University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴⁵ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
⁴⁶ Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
⁴⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
⁴⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁵⁰ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy.
⁵¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy.
⁵² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
⁵³ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁵⁴ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, UK.
⁵⁵ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy & GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
⁵⁶ Guangxi Key Laboratory for Relativistic Astrophysics, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning, China.

PMID: 37344593
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06064-x

X-ray polarization evidence for a 200-year-old flare of Sgr A

Frédéric Marin et al. Nature. 2023 Jul.

. 2023 Jul;619(7968):41-45.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06064-x. Epub 2023 Jun 21.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, Strasbourg, France. frederic.marin@astro.unistra.fr.
² Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany.
³ Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
⁴ Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
⁵ INAF Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome, Italy.
⁶ ASI - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome, Italy.
⁷ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, Strasbourg, France.
⁸ Space Science Data Center, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome, Italy.
⁹ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Monte Porzio Catone, Italy.
¹⁰ Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹¹ Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.
¹² Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France.
¹³ RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Wako, Japan.
¹⁴ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC, Granada, Spain.
¹⁵ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Selargius, Italy.
¹⁶ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
¹⁷ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
¹⁸ NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA.
¹⁹ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino, Turin, Italy.
²⁰ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Torino, Turin, Italy.
²¹ INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy.
²² Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
²³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
²⁴ Science and Technology Institute, Universities Space Research Association, Huntsville, AL, USA.
²⁵ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
²⁶ Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
²⁷ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
²⁸ Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague 4, Czech Republic.
²⁹ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁰ Yamagata University, Yamagata-shi, Japan.
³¹ Osaka University, Suita, Japan.
³² University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³³ School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
³⁴ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan.
³⁵ International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan.
³⁶ Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
³⁷ Department of Astrophysics, St. Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia.
³⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
³⁹ Physics Department and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
⁴⁰ Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁴¹ MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴² Graduate School of Science, Division of Particle and Astrophysical Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
⁴³ Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan.
⁴⁴ University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴⁵ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
⁴⁶ Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
⁴⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
⁴⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁵⁰ INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy.
⁵¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy.
⁵² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
⁵³ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁵⁴ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, UK.
⁵⁵ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy & GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
⁵⁶ Guangxi Key Laboratory for Relativistic Astrophysics, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning, China.

PMID: 37344593
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06064-x

Abstract

The centre of the Milky Way Galaxy hosts a black hole with a solar mass of about 4 million (Sagittarius A^* (Sgr A)) that is very quiescent at present with a luminosity many orders of magnitude below those of active galactic nuclei¹. Reflection of X-rays from Sgr A^* by dense gas in the Galactic Centre region offers a means to study its past flaring activity on timescales of hundreds and thousands of years². The shape of the X-ray continuum and the strong fluorescent iron line observed from giant molecular clouds in the vicinity of Sgr A^* are consistent with the reflection scenario^3-5. If this interpretation is correct, the reflected continuum emission should be polarized⁶. Here we report observations of polarized X-ray emission in the direction of the molecular clouds in the Galactic Centre using the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. We measure a polarization degree of 31% ± 11%, and a polarization angle of -48° ± 11°. The polarization angle is consistent with Sgr A^* being the primary source of the emission, and the polarization degree implies that some 200 years ago, the X-ray luminosity of Sgr A^* was briefly comparable to that of a Seyfert galaxy.

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References

1. Genzel, R., Eisenhauer, F. & Gillessen, S. The Galactic Center massive black hole and nuclear star cluster. Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 3121–3195 (2010). - DOI
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X-ray polarization evidence for a 200-year-old flare of Sgr A

Affiliations

X-ray polarization evidence for a 200-year-old flare of Sgr A

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

References

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Miscellaneous