2010/04/14 by D. Pooley · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #High-pressure geophysics and materials
paper · doi:10.1073/pnas.0913903107
openalex publication_date 2010/04/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Globular clusters and x-ray astronomy have a long and fruitful history. Uhuru and OSO-7 revealed highly luminous (> 10(36) ergs(-1)) x-ray sources in globular clusters, and Einstein and ROSAT revealed a larger population of low-luminosity (< 10(33) ergs(-1)) x-ray sources. It was realized early on that the high-luminosity sources were low-mass x-ray binaries in outburst and that they were orders of magnitude more abundant per unit mass in globular clusters than in the rest of the galaxy. However, the low-luminosity sources proved difficult to classify. Many ideas were put forth--low-mass x-ray binaries in quiescence (qLMXBs), cataclysmic variables (CVs), active main-sequence binaries (ABs), and millisecond pulsars (MSPs)--but secure identifications were scarce. In ROSAT observations of 55 clusters, about 25 low-luminosity sources were found. Chandra has now observed over 80 Galactic globular clusters, and these observations have revealed over 1,500 x-ray sources. The superb angular resolution has allowed for many counterpart identifications, providing clues to the nature of this population. It is a heterogeneous mix of qLMXBs, CVs, ABs, and MSPs, and it has been shown that the qLMXBs and CVs are both, in part, overabundant like the luminous LMXBs. The number of x-ray sources in a cluster correlates very well with its encounter frequency. This points to dynamical formation scenarios for the x-ray sources and shows them to be excellent tracers of the complicated internal dynamics. The relation between the encounter frequency and the number of x-ray sources has been used to suggest that we have misunderstood the dynamical states of globular clusters.