X-ray observations of Blueberry galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates the X-ray properties of Blueberry galaxies, revealing they are generally underluminous in X-rays compared to star formation expectations, with some sources showing excess luminosity possibly due to hidden active nuclei.

Contribution

First X-ray observations of Blueberry galaxies, assessing their X-ray emission and its relation to star formation and metallicity, highlighting deviations from established empirical relations.

Findings

Most BBs are underluminous in X-rays compared to predictions.

One source shows an unusually high X-ray luminosity, possibly due to an active nucleus.

Empirical relations may not apply to BBs with high specific star formation rates.

Abstract

Compact star-forming galaxies were dominant galaxy types in the early Universe. Blueberry galaxies (BBs) represent their local analogues being very compact and having intensive star formation. Motivated by high X-ray emission recently found in other analogical dwarf galaxies, called Green Peas, we probe into the X-ray properties of BBs to determine if their X-ray emission is consistent with the empirical laws for star-forming galaxies. We performed the first X-ray observations of a small sample of BBs with the XMM-Newton satellite. Spectral analysis for detected sources and upper limits measured via Bayesian-based analysis for very low-count measurements were used to determine the X-ray properties of our galaxy sample. Clear detection was obtained only for 2 sources, with one source exhibiting an enhanced X-ray luminosity to the scaling relations. For the remaining 5 sources, only an upper limit was constrained, suggesting BBs to be rather underluminous as a whole. Our analysis shows that the large scatter cannot be easily explained by the stochasticity effects. While the bright source is above and inconsistent at almost the 99% confidence level, the upper limits of the two sources are below the expected distribution. These results indicate that the empirical relations between the star formation rate, metallicity, and X-ray luminosity might not hold for BBs with uniquely high specific star formation rates. One possible explanation could be that the BBs may not be old enough to have a significant X-ray binary population. The high luminosity of the only bright source can be then caused by an additional X-ray source, such as a hidden active galactic nucleus or more extreme ultraluminous X-ray sources.