Abstract
THE origin of the cosmic X-ray background remains a mystery after thirty years of study. The three properties of the background radiation commonly used for tackling this problem—its spectrum, isotropy and resolved component—are well defined by observations, but do not lead to a simple interpretation. A different approach to the problem1,2, in which fluctuations in the unresolved component are cross-correlated with galaxy catalogues, has led to the suggestion2 that as much as 60% of the background emission can be explained by a population of X-ray sources similar to present-day optically bright galaxies. Here we point out that such analyses must allow for contributions from X-ray sources which cluster with the galaxies, but do not necessarily have a counterpart in galaxy catalogues. For realistic assumptions about clustering, we obtain a revised limit on the local X-ray emissivity due to sources correlated with nearby galaxies. Extrapolating these results up to a redshift of ∼5, we find that a smaller, but still significant, fraction of the X-ray background (30 ±15%) can be accounted for by these sources. To explain the residual background emissions, evolution of the source properties and/or a new population of sources at high redshift is required.
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Lahav, O., Fabian, A., Barcons, X. et al. A significant contribution to the cosmic X-ray background from sources associated with nearby galaxies. Nature 364, 693–695 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1038/364693a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/364693a0
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