We study the unresolved X-ray emission in three Local Group dwarf elliptical galaxies (NGC 147, NGC 185 and NGC 205) using XMM-Newton observations, which most likely originates from a collection of weak X-ray sources, mainly cataclysmic variables and coronally active binaries. Precise knowledge of this stellar X-ray emission is crucial not only for understanding the relevant stellar astrophysics but also for disentangling and quantifying the thermal emission from diffuse hot gas in nearby galaxies. We find that the integrated X-ray emissivities of the individual dwarf ellipticals agree well with that of the Solar vicinity, supporting an often assumed but untested view that the X-ray emissivity of old stellar populations is quasi-universal in normal galactic environments, in which dynamical effects on the formation and destruction of binary systems are not important. The average X-ray emissivity of the dwarf ellipticals, including M32 studied in the literature, is measured to be L 0.5−2 keV /M * = (6.0 ± 0.5 ± 1.8) × 10 27 erg s −1 M −1 ⊙ . We also compare this value to the integrated X-ray emissivities of Galactic globular clusters and old open clusters and discuss the role of dynamical effects in these dense stellar systems.

The interplay between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their environments is believed to command an essential role in galaxy evolution. The majority of these SMBHs are in the radiative inefficient accretion phase where this interplay remains elusive, but suggestively important, due to few observational constraints. To remedy this, we directly fit 2D hydrodynamic simulations to Chandra observations of Sgr A* with Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling, self-consistently modelling the 2D inflowoutflow solution for the first time. We find the temperature and density at flow onset are consistent with the origin of the gas in the stellar winds of massive stars in the vicinity of Sgr A*. We place the first observational constraints on the angular momentum of the gas and estimate the centrifugal radius, r c ≈ 0.056 r b ≈ 8 × 10 −3 pc, where r b is the Bondi radius. Less than 1% of the inflowing gas accretes on to the SMBH, the remainder being ejected in a polar outflow. We decouple the quiescent point-like emission from the spatially extended flow. We find this point-like emission, accounting for ∼ 4% of the quiescent flux, is spectrally too steep to be explained by unresolved flares, nor bremsstrahlung, but is likely a combination of a relatively steep synchrotron power law and the high-energy tail of inverse-Compton emission. With this self-consistent model of the accretion flow structure, we make predictions for the flow dynamics and discuss how future X-ray spectroscopic observations can further our understanding of the Sgr A* accretion flow.

We test and improve the numerical schemes in our smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code for cosmological simulations, including the pressure-entropy formulation (PESPH), a time-dependent artificial viscosity, a refined timestep criterion, and metalline cooling that accounts for photoionisation in the presence of a recently refined Haardt & Madau (2012) model of the ionising background. The PESPH algorithm effectively removes the artificial surface tension present in the traditional SPH formulation, and in our test simulations it produces better qualitative agreement with mesh-code results for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and cold cloud disruption. Using a set of cosmological simulations, we examine many of the quantities we have studied in previous work. Results for galaxy stellar and HI mass functions, star formation histories, galaxy scaling relations, and statistics of the Lyα forest are robust to the changes in numerics and microphysics. As in our previous simulations, cold gas accretion dominates the growth of high-redshift galaxies and of low mass galaxies at low redshift, and recycling of winds dominates the growth of massive galaxies at low redshift. However, the PESPH simulation removes spurious cold clumps seen in our earlier simulations, and the accretion rate of hot gas increases by up to an order of magnitude at some redshifts. The new numerical model also influences the distribution of metals among gas phases, leading to considerable differences in the statistics of some metal absorption lines, most notably NeVIII.

Sgr A* represents a unique laboratory for the detailed study of accretion processes around a low-luminosity supermassive black hole (SMBH). Recent X-ray observations have allowed for spatially resolved modeling of the emission from the accretion flow around the SMBH, placing tight constraints on the flux and spectral shape of the accretion from the inner region with r < 10 3 R g , where R g ≡ GM BH /c 2 is the gravitational radius of the black hole with mass of M BH . We present here the first modeling of the multi-band spectral energy distribution (SED) of this inner region to better constrain the physical condition of the innermost accretion flow. Our modeling uses the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to fit the SED, accounting for the limitations on the accretion rate at the outer radius of 10 3 R g from the earlier works and the domination of the accretion flow within 30 R g to the sub-mm bump. It is found that the fitting results of the outflow index could be very different. If only the most luminous part of the SED, the sub-mm bump, is considered, the outflow index is about 0, while if low-frequency radio data and X-ray data are also included, the outflow index could be 0.37 or even higher. The great difference of the fitting results indicates that the outflow index should be variable along radius, with a strong outflow in the outer region and a weak outflow in the innermost region. Such weak outflow agrees with numerical simulations and is possible to explain the multi-band SED even better.

The Cygnus Loop has been the focus of substantial debate concerning the contribution of charge exchange (CX) to supernova remnant (SNR) X-ray emission. We take advantage of a distinct feature of CX, enhanced Kα forbidden line emission, and employ the energy centroid of the OVII Kα triplet as a diagnostic. Based on X-ray spectra extracted from an extensive set of Suzaku observations, we measure the energy centroid shifts of the triplet on and off the shock rim of the remnant. We find that enhanced forbidden to resonance line emission exists throughout much of the rim and this enhancement azimuthally correlates with non-radiative Hα filaments, a tracer of strong neutral-plasma interaction in the optical. We also show that alternative mechanisms cannot explain the enhancement observed. These results demonstrate the need to model the CX contribution to the X-ray emission of SNRs, particularly for shocks propagating in a partially neutral medium. Such modelling may be critically important to the correct measurements of the ionization, thermal, and chemical properties of SNRs.