Chandra monitoring observation of the Antennae galaxies: the X-ray source populations and the shape of their luminosity function

Abstract

We present the X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of the Antennae galaxies based on 8 observation performed with Chandra. We detect between 37 and 49 sources in each observation. After combining all observations we detect a total of 120 sources down to a limiting luminosity of ∼ 2x10³⁷ erg s-1. Comparison between the XLFs of the individual observations shows that they are not affected by source variability. The cumulative XLF of the coadded observations is well represented by a single power-law with a slope of ∼ - 0.5.