Abstract
Several high velocity clouds (HVCs) are now known to be soft X-ray sources. In this paper we suggest that all interaction between the HVCs and the galactic halo is leading to plasma instabilities that generate energetic electrons which in turn generate X-ray emission. This process is essentially analogous to the interaction process between cornets and non-magnetized planets with the solar wind which is also known to lead to the generation of X-rays. We show that for reasonable assumptions about the galactic halo magnetic field, the X-ray emission can be converted into an estimate of the mean galactic halo density it the position of the cloud. This provides a method for estimating the baryonic mass of the plasma halo provided that we call obtain a good estimate for the distance to the HVC.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 111-118 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Journal of Plasma Physics |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2005 |
Keywords
- high velocity clouds
- soft X-ray sources
- energetic electrons
- solar wind
- galactic halo density
- X-ray emission