MG14 - Talk detail

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 Participant

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Session

Accepted

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Talk

Title

Abstract

In this review I will 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 constituted of obscured supergiant HMXBs, and some, called supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs), exhibit short and intense X-ray flares. I will discuss the formation and evolution of HMXBs, how these observations can constrain the accretion models (e.g. clumpy winds, transitory accretion disc, magneto-centrifugal barrier, etc), report comparisons with population synthesis models, and finally propose a consistent scenario explaining the properties of these high-energy sources. Because they are the likely progenitors of Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), and also of double neutron star systems, related to short/hard gamma-ray bursts, the knowledge of the formation and evolution of this HMXB population is of prime importance.

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