Population of HMXB in the Galaxy

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the population and distribution of High-Mass X-ray Binaries in the Milky Way using INTEGRAL data, revealing their spectral properties and correlation with galactic structures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of HMXB properties, spectra, and spatial distribution, linking them to galactic spiral arms and galactic structure models.

Findings

Most HMXBs are X-ray pulsars.

HMXB distribution peaks align with spiral arm tangents.

Galactic component densities are discussed in context.

Abstract

We study populations of High-Mass X-ray Binaries in the Galaxy using data of the INTEGRAL observatory in a hard X-ray energy band. More than two hundreds of sources were detected with INTEGRAL near the galactic plane (|b|<5 deg), most of them have a galactic origin and belong to high (HMXB) and low mass (LMXB) X-ray binaries. We investigated properties and spectra of a large sample of HMXBs and concluded that most of them are belong to X-ray pulsars. We also build the distribution of HMXBs for the whole Galaxy and showed that its peaks are practically coincident with spiral arm tangents. The obtained results are discussed in terms of some model estimations of the density of different components of the Galaxy.