Oral Presentation

SPECTRAL MODELING OF THE CHARGE-EXCHANGE X-RAY EMISSION FROM M82

Shuinai Zhang, et al.

It has been proposed that the charge exchange (CX) process at the interface between hot and cool interstellar gases could contribute significantly to the observed soft X-ray emission in star forming galaxies. We analyze the XMM-Newton/RGS spectrum of M82, using a newly developed CX model combined with a single-temperature thermal plasma to characterize the volume-filling hot gas. The CX process is largely responsible for not only the strongly enhanced forbidden lines of the Kα triplets of various He-like ions, but also good fractions of the Lyα transitions of C vi (∼ 87%), O viii and N vii (