An XMM-Newton Observation of the Massive Edge-on Sb Galaxy NGC 2613

We present an XMM-Newton observation of the massive edge-on Sb galaxy NGC 2613. We discover that this galaxy contains a deeply embedded active nucleus with a 0.3-10 keV luminosity of 3.3x10^40 erg/s and a line-of-sight absorption column of 1.2x10^23 cm^-2. Within the 25 mag/arcsec^2 optical B-band isophote of the galaxy, we detect an additional 4 sources with an accumulated luminosity of 4.3x10^39 erg/s. The bulk of the unresolved X-ray emission spatially follows the near-infrared (NIR) K-band surface brightness distribution; the luminosity ratio L_X/L_K ~ 8x10^-4 is consistent with that inferred from galactic discrete sources. This X-ray-NIR association and the compatibility of the X-ray spectral fit with the expected spectrum of a population of discrete sources suggest that low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) are the most likely emitters of the unresolved emission in the disk region. The remaining unresolved emission is primarily due to extraplanar hot gas. The luminosity of this gas is at least a factor of 10 less than that predicted by recent simulations of intergalactic gas accretion by such a massive galaxy with a circular rotation speed V_c ~ 304 km/s^2 (Toft et al. 2002). Instead, we find that the extraplanar hot gas most likely represents discrete extensions away from the disk, including two ``bubble-like'' features on either side of the nucleus. These extensions appear to correlate with radio continuum emission and, energetically, can be easily explained by outflows from the galactic disk.
Comment: 17 pages, accepted by MNRAS