Neutron Stars and Black Holes in X-Ray Binaries
Abstract
Galactic accretion driven stellar X-ray sources can be divided into groups in different ways. An important division, which covers almost all known X-ray binaries, can be made according to the mass of the donor star: high-mass X-ray binaries and low-mass X-ray binaries. Another distinction (partially overlapping with the previous one) can be made on the basis of the nature of the accreting object: a strongly magnetized neutron star, a neutron star with a weak magnetic field, or a black hole. In this review I describe the properties of these different types of X-ray binaries, and discuss the mass determinations which are the basis for distinguishing accreting neutron stars from black holes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9802177,
title = {Neutron Stars and Black Holes in X-Ray Binaries},
author = {Jan van Paradijs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9802177},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
58 pages, 15 figures. To be published in 'The Many Faces of Neutron Stars', R. Buccheri, J. van Paradijs, M.A. Alpar (Eds), Kluwer Academic Publishers