Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients as transient sources in High Mass X-ray Binaries
L. Sidoli
备注：
Invited talk at the conference "The Extreme and Variable High Energy Sky", September 19-23, 2011, Chia Laguna, Sardegna (Italy). 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication on PoS (PoS(Extremesky 2011)010)
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) represent the most extreme case of X-ray variability in High Mass X-ray Binaries hosting blue supergiant companions. Mainly discovered thanks to the INTEGRAL monitoring of the Galactic plane, these hard X-ray transients display dynamic ranges which can span five orders of magnitude. This intensity variability is associated with accretion onto Galactic compact objects (mostly neutron stars) through a physical mechanism which is still poorly understood. A review of the current status of our understanding on these sources is presented and discussed. Finally, I present recent XMM-Newton results about the SFXT IGRJ16418-4532, proposing that its variability behavior is due to a transitional accretion regime, intermediate between pure wind accretion and Roche Lobe Overflow. This same regime could explain the X-ray activity of other "intermediate" SFXTs with narrow orbits.
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients are a class of Galactic High Mass X-ray Binaries with supergiant companions. Their extreme transient X-ray flaring activity was unveiled thanks to INTEGRAL/IBIS observations. The SFXTs dynamic range, with X-ray luminosities from 1E32 erg/s to 1E37 erg/s, and long time intervals of low X-ray emission, are puzzling, given that both their donor star properties and their orbital and spin periodicities seem very similar to those displayed by massive binaries with persistent X-ray emission. Clumpy supergiant winds, accretion barriers, orbital geometries and wind anis…
We present preliminary results on Herschel/PACS mid/far-infrared photometric observations of INTEGRAL supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), with the aim of detecting the presence and characterizing the nature of absorbing material (dust and/or cold gas), either enshrouding the whole binary systems, or surrounding the sources within their close environment. These unique observations allow us to better characterize the nature of these HMXBs, to constrain the link with their environment (impact and feedback), and finally to get a better understanding of the formation and evolution of such …
Observations with the INTEGRAL satellite have quadrupled the population of supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), revealed a previously hidden population of obscured supergiant HMXBs, and allowed the discovery of huge and fast transient flares in supergiant HMXBs. Apart from these 3 observational facts, has INTEGRAL allowed us to better understand these supergiant HMXBs? Do we have now a better understanding of the 3 populations of HMXBs, and of their accretion process, separated in the so-called Corbet diagram? Do we better apprehend the accretion process in the supergiant HMXBs, and wh…
We have developed a stellar wind model for OB supergiants to investigate the effects of accretion from a clumpy wind on the luminosity and variability properties of High Mass X-ray Binaries. Assuming that the clumps are confined by ram pressure of the ambient gas and exploring different distributions for their mass and radii, we computed the expected X-ray light curves in the framework of the Bondi-Hoyle accretion theory, modified to take into account the presence of clumps. The resulting variability properties are found to depend not only on the assumed orbital parameters but also on the wind…
We show that for supergiants, net angular momentum is not a necessary condition for forming accretion discs during core-collapse. Even absent net rotation, convective motions in the outer parts of supergiants generate mean horizontal flows at a given radius with velocities of order 1 km/s; the direction of the mean flow will vary as a function of height through the convection zone. We confirm these analytic estimates using Cartesian Boussinesq convection simulations. These mean horizontal flows lead to a random angular momentum in supergiant convection zones that exceeds that of the last stabl…
I present a brief up-to-date review of the current understanding of Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients, with an emphasis on the observational point of view. After more than a decade since their discovery, a remarkable progress has been made in getting the picture of their phenomenology at X-ray energies. However, a similar in-depth investigation of the properties of the supergiant companions is needed, but has started more recently. A multifrequency approach is the key to fully understand the physical mechanism driving the SFXT behaviour, still under debate.
The aim of this review is to describe the nature, formation and evolution of the three kinds of high mass X-ray binary (HMXB) population: i. systems hosting Be stars (BeHMXBs), ii. systems accreting the stellar wind of supergiant stars (sgHMXBs), and iii. supergiant stars overflowing their Roche lobe. There are now many new observations, from the high-energy side (mainly from the INTEGRAL satellite), complemented by multi-wavelength observations (mainly in the optical, near and mid-infrared from ESO facilities), showing that a new population of supergiant HMXBs has been recently revealed. New …
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 model for the physics governing this X-ray behaviour suggests that the winds of the donor OB supergiants are magnetized. In agreement with this model, the first spectropolarimetric observations of the SFXT IGR J11215-5952 using the FORS2 instrument at the Very Large Telescope indicate the presence of a kG longitudinal magnetic field. Based on these results, …
We report here on the recent results of a monitoring campaign we have been carrying out with Swift/XRT on a sample of four Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients. The main goal of this large programme (with a net Swift/XRT exposure of 540 ks, updated to 2009, August, 31) is to address several main open issues related to this new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries hosting OB supergiant stars as companions. Here we summarize the most important results obtained between October 2007 and August 2009.
We review the status of our knowledge on supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs), a new hot topic in multi wavelength studies of binaries. We discuss the mechanisms believed to power these transients and then highlight the unique contribution Swift is giving to this field, and how new technology complements and sometimes changes the view of things.
Evidence for a luminosity-class dichotomy in the supergiant donors of persistent high-mass X-ray binaries and supergiant fast X-ray transients
INAF-IASF Milano, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica（意大利国家天体物理研究所米兰空间天体物理学与宇宙物理学研究所）；INAF-OAS, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio（意大利国家天体物理研究所太空天体物理学与空间科学观测站）
The INTEGRAL satellite has revealed a major population of supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries in our Galaxy, revolutionizing our understanding of binary systems and their evolution. This population, constituted of a compact object orbiting around a massive and luminous supergiant star, exhibits unusual properties, either being extremely absorbed, or showing very short and intense flares. An intensive set of multi-wavelength observations has led us to reveal their nature, and to show that these systems are wind-fed accretors, closely related to massive star-forming regions. In this paper I desc…
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are a new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries, discovered by the INTEGRAL satellite, which display flares lasting from minutes to hours, with peak luminosity of 1E36-1E37 erg/s. Outside the bright outbursts, they show a frequent long-term flaring activity reaching an X-ray luminosity level of 1E33-1E34 erg/s, as recently observed with the Swift satellite. Since a few persistent High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) with supergiant donors show flares with properties similar to those observed in SFXTs, it has been suggested that the flaring activity in both clas…
IGR J18483-0311 was discovered with INTEGRAL in 2003 and later classified as a supergiant fast X-ray transient. It was observed in outburst many times, but its quiescent state is still poorly known. Here we present the results of XMM-Newton, Swift, and Chandra observations of IGRJ18483-0311. These data improved the X-ray position of the source, and provided new information on the timing and spectral properties of IGR J18483-0311 in quiescence. We report the detection of pulsations in the quiescent X-ray emission of this source, and give for the first time a measurement of the spin-period deriv…
We report on a 250 ks long X-ray observation of the supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) IGR J16479-4514 performed with Suzaku in 2012 February. About 80% of the short orbital period (Porb=3.32 days) was covered as continuously as possible for the first time. The source light curve displays variability of more than two orders of magnitude, starting with a very low emission state lasting the first 46 ks (1E-13 erg/cm2/s, 1-10 keV), consistent with being due to the X-ray eclipse by the supergiant companion. The transition to the uneclipsed X-ray emission is energy dependent. Outside the eclips…
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 from the SG. We demonstrate how to combine various observables of HMXBs from the X-ray accretion luminosity produced by the wind-fed NS, in order to estimate and constrain the age of the donors. This would help us to study the stellar evolution track for each donor model. Since the evolution of massive stars is essentially determined by mass loss, and direct me…
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 reason for this dichotomy of wind-fed HMXBs is still a matter of debate. Among the several explanations that have been proposed, some of them invoke specific stellar wind properties of the donor stars. Only dedicated empiric analysis of the donors' stellar wind can provide the required information to accomplish an adequate test of these theories. However, such…
We present the first direct evidence for dense clumps of matter in the companion wind in a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) binary. This is seen as a brief period of enhanced absorption during one of the bright, fast flares that distinguish these systems. The object under study was IGR J17544-2619, and a total of 236 ks of data were accumulated with the Japanese satellite Suzaku. The activity in this period spans a dynamic range of almost 10000 in luminosity and gives a detailed look at SFXT behavior.
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 so-called clumps, originated from the inherent instability of line driven winds, and larger structures. In this paper, we report on the results of the last (and not yet published) monitoring campaigns that our group has been carrying out since 2007 with both XMM-Newton and the Swift Neil Gehrels observatory. Data collected with the EPIC cameras on-board XMM-Newton…
Phase-targeted RXTE observations have allowed us to detect a transient 71.49 \pm 0.02 s signal that is most likely to be originating from the supergiant fast X-ray transient IGR J17544-2619. The phase-folded light curve shows a possible double-peaked structure with a pulsed flux of ~4.8*10^-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1 (3-10 keV). Assuming the signal to indicate the spin period of the neutron star in the system, the provisional location of IGR J17544-2619 on the Corbet diagram places the system within the classical wind-fed supergiant XRB region. Such a result illustrates the growing trend of supergiant …
We review X-ray properties of the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients following from their observations with INTEGRAL and show that a compact object in these systems is a neutron star with strong magnetic field accreting from the stellar wind of a donor star. We show that presence of a centrifugal barrier at the magnetospheric boundary of the neutron star may be a key to understanding of abrupt short X-ray outbursts of these transients and long intervals of their quiescence.
Temporal analysis of INTEGRAL/IBIS data has revealed a 5.7195\pm0.0007 day periodicity in the supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) source AX J1845.0-0433, which we interpret as the orbital period of the system. The new-found knowledge of the orbital period is utilised to investigate the geometry of the system by means of estimating an upper limit for the size of the supergiant (<27 R_{\sun}) as well as the eccentricity of the orbit (ε<0.37).
The supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) system IGR J17544-2619 has displayed many large outbursts in the past and is considered an archetypal example of SFXTs. A search of the INTEGRAL/ISGRI data archive from MJD 52698-54354 has revealed 11 outbursts and timing analysis of the light curve identifies a period of 4.926$\pm$0.001 days which we interpret as the orbital period of the system. We find that large outbursts occasionally occur outside of periastron and place an upper limit for the radius of the supergiant of <23R$_{\sun}$.
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is well known to harbor a large number of High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs). The identification of their optical counterparts provides information on the nature of the donor stars and can help to constrain the parameters of these systems and their evolution. We obtained optical spectra for a number of HMXBs identified in previous Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys of the SMC using the AAOmega/2dF fiber-fed spectrograph at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We find 5 new Be/X-ray binaries (BeXRBs; including a tentative one), by identifying the spectral type of their opt…
In the past fifteen years a new generation of X-ray satellites led to the discovery of a subclass of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) with supergiant companions and a peculiar transient behaviour: supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs). We calculate the expected number of Galactic SFXTs for the first time, using two different statistical approaches and two sets of data based on Swift and INTEGRAL surveys, with the aim to determine how common the SFXT phenomenon really is. We find that the expected number of SFXTs in the Galaxy is about 37(+53, -22) which shows that SFXTs constitute a large p…
Supergiant Fast X-ray transients are a subclass of high mass X-ray binaries displaying a peculiar and still poorly understood extreme variability in the X-ray domain. These sources undergo short sporadic outbursts (LX ~ 10^36 - 10^37 erg/s), lasting few ks at the most, and spend a large fraction of their time in an intermediate luminosity state at about LX ~ 10^33 - 10^34 erg/s. The sporadic and hardly predictable outbursts of supergiant fast X-ray transients were so far best discovered by large field of view (FOV) coded-mask instruments; their lower luminosity states require, instead, higher …
We have investigated the dipping activity observed in the high-mass X-ray binary 4U 1907+09 and shown that the source continues to pulsate in the "off" state, noting that the transition between the "on" and "off" states may be either dip-like or flare-like. This behavior may be explained in the framework of the "gated accretion" scenario proposed to explain the flares in supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs). We conclude that 4U 1907+09 might prove to be a missing link between the SFXTs and ordinary accreting pulsars.
We use 2D (axisymmetric) and 3D hydrodynamic simulations to study Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) accretion with and without transverse upstream gradients. We mainly focus on the regime of high (upstream) Mach number, weak upstream gradients and small accretor size, which is relevant to neutron star (NS) accretion in wind-fed Supergiant X-ray binaries (SgXBs). We present a systematic exploration of the flow in this regime. When there are no upstream gradients, the flow is always stable regardless of accretor size or Mach number. For finite upstream gradients, there are three main types of behavior…
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 supergiant star and a simplified model for the accretion onto the compact object. A self-consistent calculation of the photoionization of the stellar wind by the X-rays from the accreting neutron star is included. This effect is convolved with the modulation of the mass accretion rate induced by the eccentric orbit to obtain the expected X-ray luminosity of a syste…
We report here on the XMM-Newton observations of the three supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXT) XTE J1739-302, IGRJ08408-4503, and IGRJ18410-0535. For the latter source we only discuss some preliminary results of our data analysis. Some interpretation is provided for the timing and spectral behavior of the three sources in terms of the different theoretical models proposed so far to interpret the behavior of the SFXTs.
The long-term X-ray lightcurves of classical supergiant X-ray binaries and supergiant fast X-ray transients show relatively similar super-orbital modulations, which are still lacking a sound interpretation. We propose that these modulations are related to the presence of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) known to thread the winds of OB supergiants. To test this hypothesis, we couple the outcomes of 3-D hydrodynamic models for the formation of CIRs in stellar winds with a simplified recipe for the accretion onto a neutron star. The results show that the synthetic X-ray light curves are inde…
In this review I first 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. I then report on the discovery of two new populations of HMXBs hosting supergiant stars, recently revealed by a wealth of new observations, coming from the high energy side (INTEGRAL, Swift, XMM, Chandra satellites), and complemented by multi-wavelength optical/infrared observations (mainly ESO facilities). The first population is constituted of obscured supergiant HMXBs, the seco…
We investigate how the proximity of supergiant donor stars to the Eddington-limit, and their advanced evolutionary stage, may influence the evolution of massive and ultra-luminous X-ray binaries with supergiant donor stars (SGXBs and ULXs). We construct models of massive stars with different internal hydrogen/helium gradients and different hydrogen-rich envelope masses, and expose them to slow mass loss to probe the response of the stellar radius. In addition, we compute the corresponding Roche-lobe overflow mass-transfer evolution with our detailed binary stellar evolution code, approximating…
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 of matter accreted by the compact object. With this first paper, we introduce a ballistic model to characterize the structure of the wind at the orbital scale as it accelerates, from the stellar surface to the vicinity of the accretor. Thanks to the parametrization we retained and the numerical pipeline we designed, we can investigate the supersonic flow and …
In the recent years, the discovery of a new class of Galactic transients with fast and bright flaring X-ray activity, the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients, has completely changed our view and comprehension of massive X-ray binaries. These objects display X-ray outbursts which are difficult to be explained in the framework of standard theories for the accretion of matter onto compact objects, and could represent a dominant population of X-ray binaries. I will review their main observational properties (neutron star magnetic field, orbital and spin period, long term behavior, duty cycle, quiesce…
Timing analysis of ~12.4 Ms of INTEGRAL/IBIS data has revealed a period of 51.47 +/- 0.02 days in the supergiant fast X-ray transient source XTE J1739-302/IGR J17391-3021 that can be interpreted as an orbital period. An outburst history showing 35 epochs of activity has been produced, showing X-ray outbursts throughout the orbit of XTE J1739-302. Possible indications of an enhanced equatorial density region within the supergiant stellar wind are present in the phase-folded lightcurve. It is found that many orbital configurations are possible within this system with eccentricities of up to e ~0…
A significant fraction of high-mass X-ray binaries are supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs). The prime model for the physics governing their X-ray behaviour suggests that the winds of donor OB supergiants are magnetized. To investigate if magnetic fields are indeed present in the optical counterparts of such systems, we acquired low-resolution spectropolarimetric observations of the two optically brightest SFXTs, IGR J08408-4503 and IGR J11215-5952 with the ESO FORS2 instrument during two different observing runs. No field detection at a significance level of 3sigma was achieved for IGR J0…
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are HMXBs with OB supergiant companions. I review the results of the Swift SFXT Project, which since 2007 has been exploiting Swift's capabilities in a systematic study of SFXTs and supergiant X-ray binaries (SGXBs) by combining follow-ups of outbursts, when detailed broad-band spectroscopy is possible, with long-term monitoring campaigns, when the out-of-outburst fainter states can be observed. This strategy has led us to measure their duty cycles as a function of luminosity, to extract their differential luminosity distributions in the soft X-ray doma…
The usage of cumulative luminosity distributions, constructed thanks to the long-term observations available through wide field hard X-ray imagers, has been recently exploited to study the averaged high energy emission (>17 keV) from Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) and classical Supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (SgXBs). Here, we take advantage of the long term monitorings now available with Swift/XRT to construct for the first time the cumulative luminosity distributions of a number of SFXTs and the classical SgXB IGR J18027-2016 in the soft X-ray domain with a high sensitivity foc…
We have characterized the typical temporal behaviour of the bright X-ray flares detected from the three Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients showing the most extreme transient behaviour (XTEJ1739-302, IGRJ17544-2619, SAXJ1818.6-1703). We focus here on the cumulative distributions of the waiting-time (time interval between two consecutive X-ray flares), and the duration of the hard X-ray activity (duration of the brightest phase of an SFXT outburst), as observed by INTEGRAL/IBIS in the energy band 17-50 keV. Adopting the cumulative distribution of waiting-times, it is possible to identify the typic…
High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXB) have been revealed by a wealth of multi-wavelength observations, from X-ray to optical and infrared domain. After describing the 3 different kinds of HMXB, we focus on 3 HMXB hosting supergiant stars: IGR J16320-4751, IGR J16465-4507 and IGR J16318-4848, respectively called "The Good", "The Bad" and "The Ugly". We review in these proceedings what the observations of these sources have brought to light concerning our knowledge of HMXB, and what part still remains in the dark side. Many questions are still pending, related to accretion processes, stellar wind prop…
Supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) is a new class of the high mass X-ray binary that shows short X-ray flares. The physical mechanism of SFXT short flares is still open for discussion. The accretion process of dense clumps in stellar wind onto neutron star (NS) has been proposed as the origin of such short flares. In order to examine the applicability of the clumpy wind scenario, we focus on the accretion mode that depends on orbital parameters. Our goal is to impose restrictions on the orbital parameters of SFXT. Assuming a simple analytic model of clumpy wind, we investigate the conditio…
The accretion of the stellar wind material by a compact object represents the main mechanism powering the X-ray emission in classical supergiant high mass X-ray binaries and supergiant fast X-ray transients. In this work we present the first attempt to simulate the accretion process of a fast and dense massive star wind onto a neutron star, taking into account the effects of the centrifugal and magnetic inhibition of accretion ("gating") due to the spin and magnetic field of the compact object. We made use of a radiative hydrodynamical code to model the non-stationary radiatively driven wind o…
Supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs) are high mass X-ray binaries associated with OB supergiant companions and characterised by an X-ray flaring behaviour whose dynamical range reaches 5 orders of magnitude on timescales of a few hundred to thousands of seconds. Current investigations concentrate on finding possible mechanisms to inhibit accretion in SFXTs and explain their unusually low average X-ray luminosity. We present the Swift observations of an exceptionally bright outburst displayed by the SFXT IGR J17544-2619 on 2014 October 10 when the source achieved a peak luminosity of $3\tim…
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 population of HMXBs hosting supergiant stars has been revealed in the last years, with multi-wavelength campaigns including high energy (INTEGRAL, Swift, XMM, Chandra) and optical/infrared (mainly ESO) observations. This population is divided between obscured supergiant HMXBs, and supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs), characterized by short and intense X…
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 variability in X-rays, which still lacks an unambiguous interpretation. A number of deep pointed observations with XMM-Newton have been carried out to study the quiescent emission of these sources and gain insight into the mechanism that causes their X-ray variability. Aims. We continued this study by using three XMM-Newton observations of the two supergiant fast X-r…
IGR J18483-0311 is an X-ray pulsar with transient X-ray activity, belonging to the new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries called Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients. This system is one of the two members of this class, together with IGR J11215-5952, where both the orbital (18.52d) and spin period (21s) are known. We report on the first complete monitoring of the X-ray activity along an entire orbital period of a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient. These Swift observations, lasting 28d, cover more than one entire orbital phase consecutively. They are a unique data-set, which allows us to constrain the…
We report on the Swift monitoring of the candidate supergiant fast X-ray transient (SFXT) IGR J16418-4532, for which both orbital and spin periods are known (~3.7d and ~1250s, respectively). Our observations, for a total of ~43ks, span over three orbital periods and represent the most intense and complete sampling of the light curve of this source with a sensitive X-ray instrument. With this unique set of observations we can address the nature of this transient. By applying the clumpy wind model for blue supergiants to the observed X-ray light curve, and assuming a circular orbit, the X-ray em…
We present the most recent results from our investigation on Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients, a class of High-Mass X-ray Binaries, with a possible counterpart in the gamma-ray energy band. Since 2007 Swift has contributed to this new field by detecting outbursts from these fast transients with the BAT and by following them for days with the XRT. Thus, we demonstrated that while the brightest phase of the outburst only lasts a few hours, further activity is observed at lower fluxes for a remarkably longer time, up to weeks. Furthermore, we have performed several campaigns of intense monitoring…
We have analysed an archival XMM-Newton EPIC observation that serendipitously covered the sky position of a variable X-ray source AX J1714.1-3912, previously suggested to be a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT). During the XMM-Newton observation the source is variable on a timescale of hundred seconds and shows two luminosity states, with a flaring activity followed by unflared emission, with a variability amplitude of a factor of about 50. We have discovered an intense iron emission line with a centroid energy of 6.4 keV in the power law-like spectrum, modified by a large absorption (NH a…
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 arm, at an estimated distance of 13 kpc. During the observation, the source showed strong variability exceeding two orders of magnitudes, never observed before from this source. Its X-ray flux varied in the range from 0.1 counts/s to about 15 counts/s, with several bright flares of different durations (from a few hundreds to a few thousands seconds) and som…
Supergiant X-ray Binaries (SgXB) host a compact object, often a neutron star (NS), orbiting an evolved O/B star. Mass transfer proceeds through the intense line-driven wind of the stellar donor, a fraction of which is captured by the gravitational field of the NS. The subsequent accretion process onto the NS is responsible for the abundant X-ray emission from SgXB. They also display peak-to-peak variability of the X-ray flux by a factor of a few 10 to 100, along with changes in the hardness ratios possibly due to varying absorption along the line-of-sight. We use recent radiation-hydrodynamic …
In young starburst galaxies, the X-ray population is expected to be dominated by the relics of the most massive and short-lived stars, black-hole and neutron-star high mass X-ray binaries (XRBs). In the closest such galaxy, IC 10, we have made a multi-wavelength census of these objects. Employing a novel statistical correlation technique, we have matched our list of 110 X-ray point sources, derived from a decade of Chandra observations, against published photometric data. We report an 8 sigma correlation between the celestial coordinates of the two catalogs, with 42 X-ray sources having an opt…
Timing analysis of the INTEGRAL-IBIS and Swift-BAT light curves of the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) IGR J16465-4507 has identified a period of 30.32+/-0.02 days which we interpret as the orbital period of the binary system. In addition 11 outbursts (9 of which are previously unpublished) have been found between MJD 52652 to MJD 54764, all of which occur close to the region of the orbit we regard as periastron. From the reported flux outbursts, we found a dynamical range in the interval ~30-80. Although in this regard IGR J16465-4507 cannot be considered a classical SFXT for which typ…
We have considered the existence of neutron star magnetic field given by the cyclotron lines. We collected the data of 9 sources of high-mass X-ray binaries with supergiant companions as a case of testing our model, to demonstrate their distribution and evolution. The wind velocity, spin period and magnetic field strength are studied under different mass loss rate. In our model, correlations between mass-loss rate and wind velocity are found and can be tested in further observations. We examined the parameter space where wind accretion is allowed, avoiding barrier of rotating magnetic fields, …
Among the different types of sources shining in the high energy sky, gamma-ray binaries are rapidly becoming the subject of major interest. In fact, in the last few years a number of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) have been firmly detected from MeV to TeV energies, providing secure evidences that particles can be efficiently accelerated up to very high energies in such galactic systems. Similarly to this general and emerging class of gamma-ray binaries, in principle Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) have all the "ingredients" to be transient high energy emitters. In this context, the …
