Supersoft X-rays nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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2019
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Abstract
Supersoft X-rays binaries sources (SSSs) are said to be potential SN Ia progenitors. Surrounding these sources, due to X-rays emission of a steady-state accreting white dwarf (WD), there should be an associated [O III]λ5007 nebulae. If a SN Ia occurs at this SSS phase, these nebulae should be present in early images surrounding supernova remnants (SNRs). The aim of this work is to find these expected nebulae surrounding four SSSs, CAL 83, CAL 87, RX J0513.9-6751 and RX J0550.0-7151, and three SNRs, SNR 0509-67.5, SNR 0519.69.0 and SNR N103B, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In order to do this, we obtain images from the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) using a broadband Bessell V filter, and a narrowband [O III] filter, centered at ≈ 5007 ˚A. The images were processed by the pipeline PHOTPIPE, which does the astrometry, stacking and differencing of the images, the last step using the well-known HOTPANTS code. By measuring the flux around the coordinates of the source, we study the surface brightness profiles up to 25 pc of the diffuse nebula, to later compare them to the theoretical profiles made by the photoionization code CLOUDY. Our [O III] flux measurements for CAL 83 are consistent within 2σ with previous results (Remillard et al., 1995), probably due to systematic effects in our calibration technique. In spite of this quantitative difference we confirm that CAL 83 is the only SSS with an associated [O III] ionized region of the seven candidates. The [O III] luminosity for the other objects at 7.5 pc from the central source, are . 15% of that of CAL 83. CLOUDY models of the nebulae allow us to constrain physical conditions, such as the ISM density of the source. For typical SSS parameters e.g., luminosity between 1037 − 1037.5 erg/s and effective temperature of the order of 5 × 105 K, the density of the CAL 83 nebula at 7.5 pc is suspected to be slightly lower than, but still consistent with, the range of 4 − 10 cm−3 found by Remillard et al. (1995). For all the other regions, CLOUDY models indicate ISM densities unrealistically low to be consistent with the observed luminosity upper limits.
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Tesis (Master in Astronomy)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2019
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