Distribution of High Mass X-ray Binaries in the Milky Way

Alexis Coleiro, Sylvain Chaty

Published 2011-07-03Version 1

The INTEGRAL satellite, observing the sky at high energy, has quadrupled the number of supergiant X-ray Binaries known in the Galaxy and has revealed new populations of previously hidden High Mass X-ray Binaries. These observations raise new questions about the formation and evolution of these sources. The number of detected sources is now high enough to allow us to carry out a statistical analysis of the distribution of HMXBs in the Milky Way. We derive the distance of each HMXB using a Spectral Energy Distribution fitting procedure, and we examine the correlation with the distribution of star forming complexes (SFCs) in the Galaxy. We show that HMXBs are clustered with SFCs, with a typical size of 0.3 kpc and a characteristic distance between clusters of 1.7 kpc.