Modeling the X-rays Resulting from High Velocity Clouds
  With the goal of understanding why X-rays have been reported near some high
velocity clouds, we perform detailed 3 dimensional hydrodynamic and
magnetohydrodynamic simulations of clouds interacting with environmental gas
like that in the Galaxy's thick disk/halo or the Magellanic Stream. We examine
2 scenarios. In the first, clouds travel fast enough to shock-heat warm
environmental gas. In this scenario, the X-ray productivity depends strongly on
the speed of the cloud and the radiative cooling rate. In order to shock-heat
environmental gas to temperatures of > or = 10^6 K, cloud speeds of > or = 300
km/s are required. If cooling is quenched, then the shock-heated ambient gas is
X-ray emissive, producing bright X-rays in the 1/4 keV band and some X-rays in
the 3/4 keV band due to O VII and other ions. If, in contrast, the radiative
cooling rate is similar to that of collisional ionizational equilibrium plasma
with solar abundances, then the shocked gas is only mildly bright and for only
about 1 Myr. The predicted count rates for the non-radiative case are bright
enough to explain the count rate observed with XMM-Newton toward a Magellanic
Stream cloud and some enhancement in the ROSAT 1/4 keV count rate toward
Complex C, while the predicted count rates for the fully radiative case are
not. In the second scenario, the clouds travel through and mix with hot ambient
gas. The mixed zone can contain hot gas, but the hot portion of the mixed gas
is not as bright as those from the shock-heating scenario.
