Related papers: Accretion in supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries
Neutron star high-mass X-ray binaries are well-studied in wavebands between the infrared and hard X-rays. Their low-frequency millimeter and radio properties, on the other hand, remain poorly understood. We present observations of the…
In this review I briefly describe the nature of the three kinds of High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), accreting through: (i) Be circumstellar disc, (ii) supergiant stellar wind, and (iii) Roche lobe filling supergiants. A previously unknown…
Features and applications of quasi-spherical settling accretion onto rotating magnetized neutron stars in high-mass X-ray binaries are discussed. The settling accretion occurs in wind-fed HMXBs when the plasma cooling time is longer than…
In a high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) a massive star interacts with a neutron-star or black-hole companion in various ways. The gravitational interaction enables the measurement of fundamental parameters such as the mass of both binary…
The X-ray binary system GX301-2 consists of a neutron star in an eccentric orbit accreting from the massive early-type star WRAY 977. It has previously been shown that the X-ray orbital light curve is consistent with existence of a gas…
Neutron stars in high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) generally accrete from the wind matter of their massive companion stars. Recently Shakura et al. (2012) suggested a subsonic accretion model for low-luminosity ($<4\times 10^{36}$…
Classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries host a neutron star orbiting a supergiant OB star and display persistent X-ray luminosities of 10$^{35}$ to 10$^{37}$ erg/s. The stellar wind from the massive companion is believed to be the main source…
We present in this paper a first step toward a semi-analytical treatment of the accretion process in wind-fed neutron star supergiant X-ray binaries with eccentric orbits. We consider the case of a spherically symmetric wind for the…
Bright and eclipsing, the high-mass X-ray binary Vela X-1 offers a unique opportunity to study accretion onto a neutron star from clumpy winds of O/B stars and to disentangle the complex accretion geometry of these systems. In Chandra-HETGS…
High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) are exceptional astrophysical laboratories that offer a rare glimpse into the physical processes that govern accretion on compact objects, massive-star winds, and stellar evolution. In a subset of the HMXBs,…
INTEGRAL tripled the number of super-giant high-mass X-ray binaries (sgHMXB) known in the Galaxy by revealing absorbed and fast transient (SFXT) systems. Quantitative constraints on the wind clumping of massive stars can be obtained from…
We provide a brief review of the physical processes behind the radiative driving of the winds of OB stars and the Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton capture and accretion of a fraction of the stellar wind by a compact object, typically a neutron star,…
The properties of wind accretion in symbiotic X-ray binaries (SyXBs) consisting of red-giant and magnetized neutron star (NS) are discussed. The spin-up/spin-down torques applied to NS are derived based on a hydrodynamic theory of…
The clumping of massive star winds is an established paradigm, which is confirmed by multiple lines of evidence and is supported by stellar wind theory. We use the results from time-dependent hydrodynamical models of the instability in the…
Strong winds from massive stars are a topic of interest to a wide range of astrophysical fields. In High-Mass X-ray Binaries the presence of an accreting compact object on the one side allows to infer wind parameters from studies of the…
Strongly magnetized, accreting neutron stars show periodic and aperiodic variability over a wide range of time scales. By obtaining spectral and timing information on these different time scales, we can have a closer look into the physics…
A review of spectroscopic results obtained from Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer and XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer observations of several wind-fed high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is presented. These…
Recent discoveries have confirmed the existence of a large population of X-ray sources fuelled by accretion from the stellar wind of an OB supergiant. Such systems are powerful laboratories to study many aspects of astrophysics. Over the…
INTEGRAL played a key role in discovering obscured sgHMXB in the Galaxy. We used XMM-Newton to perform X-ray wind tomography of a specific of these systems, IGR J17252-3616, featuring eclipses of the accreting pulsar. The X-ray band (0.2-10…
A new class of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) --- supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs) --- are discovered by INTEGRAL, which are associated with OB supergiants and present long spin periods. Observational evidence indicates that some…