Related papers: Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients: a Review
Novae have been reported as transients for more than two thousand years. Their bright optical outbursts are the result of explosive nuclear burning of gas accreted from a binary companion onto a white dwarf. Novae containing a white dwarf…
Fast X-ray Transients (FXTs) represent a new class of highly luminous transients in soft X-rays ($\sim$0.3-10 keV) associated with violent astrophysical processes. They manifest as short, singular flashes of X-ray photons with durations…
The aim of this PhD Thesis is to characterize a representative sample of Supergiant X-ray Binaries (SGXBs) formed by 4 sources: XTE J1855-026, a classical SGXB with long-term stable X-ray flux; AX J1841.0-0535 and AX J1845.0-0433, two…
Fast X-ray transients (FXTs) with timescales from seconds to hours have been seen by numerous space instruments. We have assembled archival data from Ariel-5, HEAO-1 (A-1 and A-2), WATCH, ROSAT, and Einstein to produce a global…
Context. Supergiant fast X-ray transients are a subclass of high mass X-ray binaries that host a neutron star accreting mass from the wind of its OB supergiant companion. They are characterized by an extremely pronounced and rapid…
SFXTs are a new class of HMXB unveiled by INTEGRAL. They are extreme systems characterised by very short outbursts (a few hours) and extreme X-ray luminosity dynamic ranges (~10^{4}). Ten confirmed systems are currently known and have shown…
Recent rapid progress in time domain surveys makes it possible to detect various types of explosive transients in the Universe in large numbers, some of which will be gravitationally lensed into multiple images. Although a large number of…
A new type of high-energy binary systems has been revealed by the INTEGRAL satellite. These sources are in the course of being unveiled by means of multi-wavelength optical, near- and mid-infrared observations. Among these sources, two…
Fast X-ray transients (FXTs) are bright X-ray flashes with durations of minutes to hours, peak isotropic luminosities of L_X,peak ~ 10^42-10^47 erg/s, and total isotropic energies of E ~ 10^47-10^50 erg. They have been detected in the soft…
Recent observations with Swift have begun to uncover $\gamma$-ray transients whose total energies are comparable to those of gamma-ray bursts (GRB), but have a duration an order of magnitude or more longer than the bulk of the GRB…
This is a brief, non-exhaustive review of Fast Radio Burst (FRB), a new category of radio transients originating from extragalactic distances. We discuss the key observational properties known so far and the scientific applications of FRBs.…
It was proposed that a remnant stable magnetar could be formed in a binary neutron-star merger, leading to a fast X-ray transient (FXT) that can last for thousands of seconds. Recently, Xue et al. suggested that CDF-S XT2 was exactly such a…
IGR J11215-5952 is a hard X-ray transient source discovered in April 2005 with INTEGRAL and a confirmed member of the new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries, the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs). Archival INTEGRAL data and RXTE…
We report on a 40 ks long, uninterrupted X-ray observation of the candidate supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) IGRJ16418-4532 performed with XMM-Newton on February 23, 2011. This high mass X-ray binary lies in the direction of the Norma…
The International Gamma-Ray Astrophyiscs Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is discovering a large number of new hard X-ray sources, many of them being HMXBs. The identification and spectral characterization of their optical/infrared counterparts is a…
Context: IGR J16479-4514 is a fast X-ray transient known to display flares lasting typically a few hours. Recently, its counterpart has been identified with a supergiant star, therefore the source can be classified as member of the newly…
With its rapid-response capability and multiwavelength complement of instruments, the Swift satellite has transformed our physical understanding of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Providing high-quality observations of hundreds of bursts, and…
Supergiant fast X-ray transients are a new class of high mass X-ray binaries recently discovered with INTEGRAL. Hours long outbursts from these sources have been observed on numerous occasions at luminosities of ~1E36-1E37 erg/s, whereas…
Supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs) are a peculiar class of supergiant high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) systems characterised by extreme variability in the X-ray domain. In current models, this is mainly attributed to the clumpy nature of…
Wind-fed supergiant X-ray binaries are precious laboratories not only to study accretion under extreme gravity and magnetic field conditions, but also to probe still highly debated properties of massive star winds. These includes the…