Scientific Seminars

Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients: a new class of High Mass X-ray binaries discovered by INTEGRAL

V. Sguera
IASF Bologna

2011-05-05    11.30    Merate - POE

A renaissance is occurring in the field of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) thanks to the recent discovery by INTEGRAL of two new classes showing peculiar X-ray characteristics never seen before in almost 40 years of X-ray observations. I will present an overview of the newly discovered class of HMXBs labelled as Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) and discuss some of the challenging and intriguing questions that such discovery is raising, e.g. accretion mechanisms at work, evolutionary paths of HMXBs, properties abd structure of the stellar wind emitted from the supergiant companion donor star. I will also investigate the possibility that SFXTs might represent the prototype of a new class of Galactic transient MeV emitters.