Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients

TL;DR

Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients are a class of high-mass X-ray binaries characterized by rapid, bright X-ray flares from systems with blue supergiant companions, with ongoing research to understand their physical mechanisms and population.

Contribution

This review consolidates observational data on SFXTs, highlighting their properties, behaviors, and the potential for a larger, previously hidden population of such systems in our galaxy.

Findings

SFXTs exhibit sporadic, fast, and bright X-ray flares reaching 10^36-10^37 erg/s.

About half of SFXTs show X-ray pulsations indicating neutron stars.

Their transient activity suggests they are a numerous, yet largely undetected, class of Galactic X-ray binaries.

Abstract

The phenomenology of a subclass of High Mass X-ray Binaries hosting a blue supergiant companion, the so-called Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs), is reviewed. Their number is growing, mainly thanks to the discoveries performed by the INTEGRAL satellite, then followed by soft X-rays observations (both aimed at refining the source position and at monitoring the source behavior) leading to the optical identification of the blue supergiant nature of the donor star. Their defining properties are a transient X-ray activity consisting of sporadic, fast and bright flares, (each with a variable duration between a few minutes and a few hours), reaching 1E36-1E37 erg/s. The quiescence is at a luminosity of 1E32 erg/s, while their more frequent state consists of an intermediate X-ray emission of 1E33-1E34 erg/s (1-10 keV). Only the brightest flares are detected by INTEGRAL (>17 keV) during short pointings, with no detected persistent emission. The physical mechanism driving the short outbursts is still debated, although a huge amount of observational data have been collected, particularly aimed at searching for pulse and orbital periodicities. About a half of the members of the class displays X-ray pulsations, indicative of the neutron star nature of the compact object. In other SFXTs a black hole cannot be excluded, although the X-ray spectrum in outburst resembles that shown by accreting X-ray pulsars. Since their transient activity is brief, although recurrent with different timescales from source to source, they could represent a numerous class of Galactic massive X-ray binaries, remained hidden up to now.