Global X-ray emission and central properties of early type galaxies

Abstract

Hubble Space Telescope observations revealed that the central surface brightness profiles of early type galaxies can be divided into two types: "core" profiles and featureless power law profiles. On the basis of this and previous results, early type galaxies have been grouped into two families: coreless galaxies, which are also rapidly rotating, nearly isotropic spheroids, and with disky isophotes, and core galaxies, which are slowly rotating and boxy-distorted. Here I investigate the relationship between global X-ray emission and shape of the inner surface brightness profile, for a sample of 59 early type galaxies. I find a clear dicothomy also in the X-ray properties, in the sense that core galaxies span the whole observed range of Lx values, while power law galaxies are confined below log Lx (erg/s)=41. Moreover, the relation between Lx and the shape of the central profile is the strongest among the relations of Lx with the basic properties characterizing the two families of early type galaxies. So, a global property such as Lx, that measures the hot gas content on a galactic scale, turns out to be surprisingly well linked to a nuclear property. Various possible reasons are explored for the origin of the different Lx behavior of core and power law galaxies. While a few explanations can be imagined for the large spread in the X-ray luminosities of core galaxies, an open problem is why power law ones never become very X-ray bright. It is likely that the presence of a central massive black hole, and possibly also the environment, play an important role in determining Lx.