X-ray Echo from the Sagittarius C Complex and 500-year Activity History of Sagittarius A*

TL;DR

This study uses Suzaku X-ray observations to reconstruct the activity history of Sagittarius A*, revealing it was more active 500 years ago with multiple flares, indicating long-term variability in its luminosity.

Contribution

It provides the first long-term light curve of Sgr A* activity over 500 years, showing sustained high luminosity and multiple flares, extending previous understanding of its variability.

Findings

Sgr A* was active 500 years ago with high luminosity.

Multiple short-term flares of 5-10 years occurred.

Past luminosity was 4-6 orders of magnitude higher than current.

Abstract

This paper presents the Suzaku results obtained for the Sagittarius (Sgr) C region using the concept of X-ray reflection nebulae (XRNe) as the echo of past flares from the super massive black hole, Sgr A*. The Sgr C complex is composed of several molecular clouds proximately located in projected distance. The X-ray spectra of Sgr C were analyzed on the basis of a view that XRNe are located inside the Galactic center plasma X-ray emission with an oval distribution around Sgr A*. We found that the XRNe are largely separated in the line-of-sight position, and are associated with molecular clouds in different velocity ranges detected by radio observations. We also applied the same analysis to the Sgr B XRNe and completed a long-term light curve for Sgr A* occurring in the past. As a new finding, we determined that Sgr A* was experiencing periods of high luminosity already 500 years ago, which is longer than the previously reported value. Our results are consistent with a scenario that Sgr A* was continuously active with sporadic flux variabilities of Lx = 1-3 x 10^39 erg s^-1 in the past 50 to 500 years. The average past luminosity was approximately 4-6 orders of magnitude higher than that presently observed. In addition, two short-term flares of 5-10 years are found. Thus, the past X-ray flare should not be a single short-term flare, but can be interpreted as multiple flares superposed on a long-term high state.