K. Misaki, K. Iwasawa, Y. Taniguchi, Y. terashima, H. Kunieda and H. Watarai,

Abstract

The discovery of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) has provided a clue to an evolutionary connection between starburst and active galactic nuclei. The IRAS color is suggested to be a possible trace of the evolution. We present the results of ASCA observations of two ULIRGs, IRAS20551-4250 and IRAS23128-5919, which are southern 100 μm bright galaxies with LIR ~ 1012Lsolar. Both are mergers and have a ``warm'' IRAS color (<FR SHAPE="SOL">25μm100μm >= 0.15). The ASCA spectrum of IRAS20551-4250 can be characterized by two components, one of which is a soft thermal component (kT ~ 0.3keV) and the other is a hard power-law component absorbed by a column density of 1022 cm-2. The observed X-ray luminosity is ~ 2.5 × 1042 ergs/s in the rest frame 2-10keV band (assuming H0 = 50 km/s/Mpc). IRAS23128-5919 also shows a hard spectrum (LX ~ 3 × 1042 ergs/s), but thermal emission is not as clear as that in IRAS20551-4250. Since these targets are similar in infrared luminosity as well as in hard X-rays but not in soft X-rays, LIR would be associated with hard X-rays. In addition to these results, we here compare X-ray properties of ULIRGs with IR properties.