Galactic eROSITA Bubbles trace radiative shocks: new insights from Suzaku observations

The magnificent bubbles at the Galactic center provide a great channel to understand the effects of feedback on galaxy evolution. The newly discovered eROSITA bubbles show enhanced X-ray emission from the shells around bubbles. Previous works assumed that the X-ray emitting gas in the shells has a single temperature component and that they trace the shock-heated lower-temperature Galactic halo gas. Here we show that the thermal structure of the eROSITA bubble shells is more complex. Using Suzaku observations we find with high confidence that the X-ray emission from the shells is best described by a two temperature thermal model, one near Galaxy’s virial temperature at kT ≈ 0.2 keV and the other at super-virial temperatures ranging between kT = 0.4 − 1.1 keV. Furthermore, we show that temperatures of the virial and super-virial components are similar in the shells and in the ambient medium, although the emission measures are significantly higher in the shells. We argue that the X-ray bright eROSITA bubble shells are the signature of compressed isothermal radiative shocks. The age of the bubbles is constrained to ≈ 75 Myr. This timescale, as well as the observed non-solar Ne/O and Mg/O ratios, favor the stellar feedback models for the formation of the Galactic bubbles, settling a long-standing debate on the origin of the Galactic bubbles.