A Chandra/ACIS Study of 30 Doradus II. X-ray Point Sources in the Massive Star Cluster R136 and Beyond

Abstract

We have studied the X-ray point source population of the 30 Doradus star-forming complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud using high-spatial-resolution X-ray images and spatially-resolved spectra obtained with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) aboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Here we describe the X-ray sources in a 17' x 17' field centered on R136, the massive star cluster at the center of the main 30 Dor nebula. We detect 20 of the 32 Wolf-Rayet stars in the ACIS field. R136 is resolved at the subarcsecond level into almost 100 X-ray sources, including many typical O3--O5 stars as well as a few bright X-ray sources previously reported. Over two orders of magnitude of scatter in L_X is seen among R136 O stars, suggesting that X-ray emission in the most massive stars depends critically on the details of wind properties and binarity of each system, rather than reflecting the widely-reported characteristic value L_X/L_bol ~ 10^{-7}. Such a canonical ratio may exist for single massive stars in R136, but our data are too shallow to confirm this relationship. Through this and future X-ray studies of 30 Doradus, the complete life cycle of a massive stellar cluster can be revealed.