Unveiling supergiant fast x-ray transient sources with INTEGRAL

Sguera, V., Bazzano, A., Bird, A.J., Dean, A.J., Ubertini, P., Barlow, E.J., Bassani, L., Clark, D.J., Hill, A.B., Malizia, M., Molina, M. and Stephen, J.B. (2006) Unveiling supergiant fast x-ray transient sources with INTEGRAL. Astrophysical Journal, 646 (1), 452-463. (doi:10.1086/504827).

Abstract

Supergiant high-mass X-ray binaries (SGXBs) are believed to be rare objects, as stars in the supergiant phase have a very short lifetime and to date only about a dozen of them have been discovered. They are known to be persistent and bright X-ray sources. INTEGRAL is changing this classical picture, as its observations are revealing the presence of a new subclass of SGXBs that have been labeled supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs), since they are strongly characterized by fast X-ray outbursts lasting less than a day, typically a few hours. We report on IBIS detections of newly discovered fast X-ray outbursts from 10 sources, four of which have been recently optically identified as supergiant high-mass X-ray binaries. For one of them in particular, IGR J112155952, we observe fast X-ray transient behavior for the first time. The remaining six sources ( IGR J164794514, IGR J164184532, IGR J16195 4945=AX J1619294945, XTE J1743363, AX J1749.12733, and IGR J174072808) are still unclassified; however, they can be considered candidate SFXTs because of their similarity to the known SFXTs.

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Contributors

Author: A.J. Bird

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