Interstellar X-ray Absorption and Scattering

TL;DR

This paper updates interstellar X-ray absorption and scattering data using recent atomic, abundance, and dust physics, providing more accurate tools for astronomical X-ray analysis.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive update to X-ray absorption and scattering data incorporating modern atomic and dust physics, and makes these data publicly available.

Findings

Updated atomic cross sections and interstellar abundances used.

Realistic dust physics incorporated into the model.

New data are publicly accessible on GitHub.

Abstract

Accurate estimates of the absorption of X-rays by interstellar gas and dust are of crucial importance for the analysis and interpretation of almost all astronomical soft X-ray observations. However, the present X-ray absorption data extensively used by the community were derived from a reduced interstellar abundance (~70% of solar) and ignoring dust scattering. Therefore, these X-ray absorption data, although highly popular, could have been substantially underestimated. Here we update the interstellar X-ray absorption and scattering by making use of updated atomic cross sections, updated interstellar abundances, and realistic X-ray dust physics, and appropriately distributing metal elements in gas and dust. The resulting X-ray absorption and scattering data are publicly available on GitHub.