Studies of the Hot Interstellar Medium in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

The hot interstellar medium (ISM) is defined as the plasma which can be found between the stars of a galaxy and has a temperature of 10^6 – 10^7 K. Within the scope of this thesis, the hot ISM of the supergiant shell LMC-SGS 2 and the HII region DEM L299 in the Large Magellanic Cloud have been studied. It was shown that DEM L299 harbors not only the supernova remnant SNR B0543-68.9 in projection, as believed up to now, but also a superbubble. A multi-frequency morphological study was performed in X-ray, optical, and radio wavelengths in order to study the distribution of the hot, the warm, and the cold ISM of this region. In addition, an X-ray spectral analysis has been performed for LMC-SGS 2, SNR B0543-68.9, the DEM L299 superbubble, and the superbubble blowout.