Distribution of High Mass X-ray Binaries in the Milky Way
Abstract
The INTEGRAL satellite, observing the sky at high energy, has quadrupled the number of supergiant X-ray Binaries known in the Galaxy and has revealed new populations of previously hidden High Mass X-ray Binaries. These observations raise new questions about the formation and evolution of these sources. The number of detected sources is now high enough to allow us to carry out a statistical analysis of the distribution of HMXBs in the Milky Way. We derive the distance of each HMXB using a Spectral Energy Distribution fitting procedure, and we examine the correlation with the distribution of star forming complexes (SFCs) in the Galaxy. We show that HMXBs are clustered with SFCs, with a typical size of 0.3 kpc and a characteristic distance between clusters of 1.7 kpc.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1107.0465,
title = {Distribution of High Mass X-ray Binaries in the Milky Way},
author = {Alexis Coleiro and Sylvain Chaty},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.0465},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
7 pages, 7 figures. Proceedings of ESO workshop "Evolution of Compact Binaries", Vina del Mar (Chile), March 2011