Abstract We present an estimate of the strength and spectrum of the X-ray background from the warm gas associated with the Galactic halo. This investigation is motivated primarily by the recent detection of a spatially variable soft X-ray component towards the north Galactic polar cap by Kuntz et al. (2001), suggesting that the warm gas heated by gravitational shocks of the Galactic halo may produce a significant contribution to the soft X-ray sky. Another purpose of the study is to refine the recent theoretical prediction of the X-ray spectrum from the Galactic halo by Xue (2001) who adopted an ideal and simple isothermal model for the gas and dark matter distributions of the Galactic halo. We use the universal density profile for the dark matter distributions of the Galactic halo to evaluate the X-ray properties of the warm gas either in hydrostatic equilibrium with, or tracing the underlying gravitational potential of the Galaxy. It has been shown that our prediction is consistent with the measured soft X-ray component towards the north Galactic polar cap if the gas fraction is taken to be ∼0.005.

Keywords cosmology: diffuse radiation --- Galaxy: formation --- X-rays: galaxies

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