Population of persistent high-mass X-ray binaries in the Milky Way

2013/02/04 by A. A. Lutovinov, A. Lutovinov, M. Revnivtsev +5 · 88 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High mass #Luminosity #Milky Way #Neutron star #Physics #Population #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Supergiant #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stt168

published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 431(1), 327-341 (Oxford University Press) · 17 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publicatiopn in MNRAS

arxiv created 2013/02/04 · openalex publication_date 2013/02/20 · arxiv updated 2015/06/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We present results of the study of persistent high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in the Milky Way, obtained from the deep INTEGRAL Galactic plane survey. This survey provides us a new insight into the population of HMXBs because almost half of the whole sample consists of sources discovered with INTEGRAL. It is demonstrated for the first time that the majority of persistent HMXBs have supergiant companions and their luminosity function steepens somewhere around ∼2 × 1036 erg s−1. We show that the spatial density distribution of HMXBs correlates well with the star formation rate distribution in the Galaxy. The vertical distribution of HMXBs has a scale-height h ≃ 85 pc, that is somewhat larger than the distribution of young stars in the Galaxy. We propose a simple toy model, which adequately describes general properties of HMXBs in which neutron stars accrete a matter from the wind of its companion (wind-fed NS-HMXBs population). Using the elaborated model we argue that a flaring activity of the so-called supergiant fast X-ray transients, the recently recognized sub-sample of HMXBs, is likely related with the magnetic arrest of their accretion.

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