Constraining the Nature of the Galactic Center X-ray Source Population
Abstract
We searched for infrared counterparts to the cluster of X-ray point sources discovered by Chandra in the Galactic Center Region (GCR). While the sources could be white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes accreting from stellar companions, their X-ray properties are consistent with magnetic Cataclysmic Variables, or High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXB) at low accretion-rates. A direct way to decide between these possibilities and hence between alternative formation scenarios is to measure or constrain the luminosity distribution of the companions. Using infrared (J, H, K, Br-gamma) imaging, we searched for counterparts corresponding to typical HMXB secondaries: spectral type B0V with K<15 at the GCR. We found no significant excess of bright stars in Chandra error circles, indicating that HMXBs are not the dominant X-ray source population, and account for fewer than 10% of the hardest X-ray sources.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0509783,
title = {Constraining the Nature of the Galactic Center X-ray Source Population},
author = {S. Laycock and J. Grindlay and M. van den Berg and P. Zhao and J. Hong and X. Koenig and E. M. Schlegel and S. E. Persson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0509783},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted in ApJ Letters for publication