Nature of the Unidentified TeV Source HESS J1614-518, Revealed by Suzaku and XMM-Newton Observations

TL;DR

This study investigates the X-ray and gamma-ray emissions of HESS J1614-518 using Suzaku and XMM-Newton, revealing multiple point sources and setting upper limits on X-ray flux at key gamma-ray emission regions.

Contribution

It provides new Suzaku and XMM-Newton observations that identify multiple X-ray sources and analyze their spectra, offering insights into the nature of the TeV gamma-ray source HESS J1614-518.

Findings

No X-ray counterpart at the second brightest TeV peak.

Detection of multiple point sources within the region.

Possible physical association between X-ray sources and TeV emission.

Abstract

We report on new Suzaku and XMM-Newton results concerning HESS J1614-518, which is one of the brightest extended TeV gamma-ray sources and has two regions with intense gamma-ray emission. We newly observed the south and center regions of HESS J1614-518 with Suzaku, since the north region, including the position of the 1st brightest peak of the TeV gamma-ray emission, has already been observed. No X-ray counterpart was found at the position of the 2nd brightest peak of the TeV gamma-ray emission; we estimated the upper limit of the X-ray flux to be 1.6 \times 10^{-13} erg cm^{-2} s^{-1} in the 2-10 keV band. The soft X-ray source Suzaku J1614-5152, which was found at the edge of the field of view in a previous observation, was also detected at the middle of HESS J1614-518. Analyzing the XMM-Newton archival data, we revealed that Suzaku J1614-5152 consists of multiple point sources. The X-ray spectrum of the brightest point source, XMMU J161406.0-515225, can be described by a power-law model with a photon index of Gamma = 5.2^{+0.6}_{-0.5}, or a blackbody model with temperature kT = 0.38^{+0.04}_{-0.04} keV. In the blackbody model, the hydrogen-equivalent column density is almost the same as that of the hard extended X-ray emission, Suzaku J1614-5141, which was found at the 1st peak position. If true, XMMU J161406.0-515225 may be physically related to Suzaku J1614-5141 and HESS J1614-518.