The population of faint transients in the galactic centre

BeppoSAX has detected a population of faint transient Xray sources in the Galactic Centre. I show that a simple irradiated-disc picture gives a consistent fit to the properties of this population, and that it probably consists of low-mass X-ray binaries which have evolved beyond their minimum orbita...

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1. Verfasser: King, A
Format: Conference item
Veröffentlicht: 2001
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author King, A
author_facet King, A
author_sort King, A
collection OXFORD
description BeppoSAX has detected a population of faint transient Xray sources in the Galactic Centre. I show that a simple irradiated-disc picture gives a consistent fit to the properties of this population, and that it probably consists of low-mass X-ray binaries which have evolved beyond their minimum orbital periods similar to 80 min. Since all post-minimum systems are transient, and neutron-star LMXBs are more common than black-hole LMXBs in the Galaxy, the majority of these systems should contain neutron stars, as observed. This picture predicts that the Galactic Centre transients should have orbital periods in the range similar to 80-120 minutes, and that most of them should repeat in the next few years. In this case, the total number of post-minimum transients in the Galaxy would be considerably smaller than the usual estimates of its total LMXB population. I discuss possible reasons for this.
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spelling oxford-uuid:3eee4f1c-253c-4f2a-a3f1-23445e7836562022-03-26T14:28:46ZThe population of faint transients in the galactic centreConference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:3eee4f1c-253c-4f2a-a3f1-23445e783656Symplectic Elements at Oxford2001King, ABeppoSAX has detected a population of faint transient Xray sources in the Galactic Centre. I show that a simple irradiated-disc picture gives a consistent fit to the properties of this population, and that it probably consists of low-mass X-ray binaries which have evolved beyond their minimum orbital periods similar to 80 min. Since all post-minimum systems are transient, and neutron-star LMXBs are more common than black-hole LMXBs in the Galaxy, the majority of these systems should contain neutron stars, as observed. This picture predicts that the Galactic Centre transients should have orbital periods in the range similar to 80-120 minutes, and that most of them should repeat in the next few years. In this case, the total number of post-minimum transients in the Galaxy would be considerably smaller than the usual estimates of its total LMXB population. I discuss possible reasons for this.
spellingShingle King, A
The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title_full The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title_fullStr The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title_full_unstemmed The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title_short The population of faint transients in the galactic centre
title_sort population of faint transients in the galactic centre
work_keys_str_mv AT kinga thepopulationoffainttransientsinthegalacticcentre
AT kinga populationoffainttransientsinthegalacticcentre