{
  "id": "1606.02285",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2016-06-07T19:59:59.000Z",
  "updated": "2016-06-07T19:59:59.000Z",
  "title": "On the detectability of CO molecules in the Interstellar Medium via X-ray spectroscopy",
  "authors": [
    "Katerine Joachimi",
    "Efraín Gatuzz",
    "Javier A. García",
    "Timothy R. Kallman"
  ],
  "comment": "7 pages, 5 figures",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.HE"
  ],
  "abstract": "We present a study of the detectability of CO molecules in the Galactic interstellar medium using high-resolution X-ray spectra obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer. We analyzed 10 bright low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) to study the CO contribution in their line-of-sights. A total of 25 observations were fitted with the ISMabs X-ray absorption model which includes photoabsorption cross-sections for O I, O II, O III and CO. We performed a Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation analysis of the goodness of fit in order to estimate the significance of the CO detection. We determine that the statistical analysis prevents a significant detection of CO molecular X-ray absorption features, except for the lines-of-sight toward XTE~J1718-330 and 4U~1636-53. In the case of XTE~J1817-330, this is the first report of the presence of CO along its line-of-sight. Our results reinforce the conclusion that molecules have a minor contribution to the absorption features in the O K-edge spectral region. We estimate a CO column density lower limit to perform a significant detection with XMM-Newton of N(CO) > 6x10^{16} cm-2 for typical exposure times",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2016-06-07T19:59:59.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "interstellar medium",
      "x-ray spectroscopy",
      "detectability",
      "bright low mass x-ray binaries",
      "molecular x-ray absorption features"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 7,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}