Related papers: The donor star of the X-ray pulsar X1908+075
Understanding the complex behavior of High Mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is not possible without detailed information about their donor stars. While crucial, this turns out to be a challenge on multiple fronts. First, multi-wavelength…
High Mass X-ray Binary Pulsars (HMXBP), in which the companion star is a source of supersonic stellar wind, provide a laboratory to probe the velocity and density profile of such winds. Here, we have measured the variation of the absorption…
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,…
We have observed the persistent but optically unidentified X-ray source X1908+075 with the PCA and HEXTE instruments on RXTE. The binary nature of this source was established by Wen, Remillard, & Bradt (2000) who found a 4.4-day orbital…
Classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries (SGXBs) and Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are two types of High-mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) that present similar donors but, at the same time, show very different behavior in the X-rays. The…
CONTEXT: Vela X-1, a prototypical high mass X-ray binary (HMXB), hosts a neutron star (NS) in a close orbit around an early-B supergiant donor star. Accretion of the donor star's wind onto the NS powers its strong X-ray luminosity. To…
We report near-infrared radial velocity measurements of the recently identified donor star in the high mass X-ray binary system OAO 1657-415 obtained in the H band using ISAAC on the VLT. Cross-correlation methods were employed to construct…
We collected a total of 4,058 X-ray binary stars, out of which 339 stars had three atmospheric parameters for optical companions from Gaia and LAMOST, while 264 stars had masses and radii of optical companions determined using stellar…
It has been proposed multiple times to use the neutron star (NS) in high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) as an orbiting X-ray probe embedded in the wind-fed of its supergiant (SG) companion in order to constrain the stellar line-driven wind…
Binary systems in which a neutron star or black hole accretes material from a high-mass star are known as high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). This chapter provides a brief introduction to the physics of wind accretion and an observational…
We report near-infrared observations of the supergiant donor to the eclipsing high mass X-ray binary pulsar IGR J18027-2016. We aim to determine its spectral type and measure its radial velocity curve and hence determine the stellar masses…
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…
A fraction of high-mass X-ray binaries are supergiant fast X-ray transients. These systems have on average low X-ray luminosities, but display short flares during which their X-ray luminosity rises by a few orders of magnitude. The leading…
High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) represent an important phase in the evolution of massive binary systems. HMXBs provide unique diagnostics to test massive-star evolution, to probe the physics of radiation-driven winds, to study the process…
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…
We report the near-infrared (IR) identification of the likely counterpart to X1908+075, a highly-absorbed Galactic X-ray source recently suspected to belong to the rare class of OB supergiant-neutron star binary systems. Our JHKs-band…
In this study, we examine the properties of donor stars of the three recently discovered ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) powered by rotating neutron stars. For this purpose, we constructed a theoretical relation between the X-ray…
Brown dwarfs and giant planets orbiting close to a host star are subjected to significant irradiation that can modify the properties of their atmospheres. In order to test the atmospheric models that are used to describe these systems, it…
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 ($<4\times 10^{36}$…
The process of mass-exchange between the components of High Mass X-ray Binary (HMXB) systems with neutron stars undergoing wind-fed accretion is discussed. The X-ray luminosity of these systems allows us to evaluate the mass capture rate by…