First Deep Xmm-newton Observations of the Lmc: Identifying Lmc Intrinsic Source Populations

The first X-ray survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was performed with the Einstein satellite, revealing diffuse X-ray emission from hot gas and discrete X-ray sources. The ROSAT observations between 1990 and 1998 supplied the most sensitive survey with imaging instruments in the soft X-ray band (0.1 2.4 keV). The PSPC and HRI observations covered 59 square degrees of the LMC and yielded a catalogue of about 1000 sources. Large efforts were undertaken to identify and classify the X-ray sources according to the nature of their X-ray emission. X-ray properties were used together with information from other electro-magnetic wavelength bands to screen out foreground stars and background objects from the LMC intrinsic X-ray source population which comprises X-ray binaries, supernova remnants and supersoft sources. However, the vast majority of sources still remains of unknown nature. First deep XMM-Newton observations of selected regions in the LMC demonstrate a large step forward in the identification of LMC X-ray sources. The large collecting area together with imaging detectors covering energies 0.1 15 keV with far improved spectral resolution allows to determine the nature of an object directly from the X-ray properties down to low flux levels of a few 10 erg cm s. First results of a deep observation north of LMC X-4 are presented, which reveal the presence of new supernova remnants and X-ray binaries.