An absorbed view of a new class of INTEGRAL sources
Abstract
The European gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL has found a group of hard X-ray sources which are highly absorbed, i.e., with column densities higher than about 10^{23}/cm^2. Here I give an overview of this class of INTEGRAL sources. The X-ray, as well as the optical/IR, properties of these sources and their location in the sky suggest that they belong to the class of high-mass X-ray binaries, some of them possibly long-period X-ray pulsars. The donors in these binaries are most probably giant or supergiant stars. I suggest that the soft X-ray spectrum below ~5 keV of IGR J16318-4848, as well as in several other X-ray binaries (e.g., XTE J0421+56), can be described by emission from a compact object which is strongly absorbed by a partionally ionised dense envelope.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0504625,
title = {An absorbed view of a new class of INTEGRAL sources},
author = {Erik Kuulkers},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0504625},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 2 figures, in "Interacting Binaries: Accretion, Evolution and Outcomes", Eds. L.A. Antonelli, et al., Proc. of the Interacting Binaries Meeting of Cefalu, Italy, July 2004, AIP, in press