J/MNRAS/388/1198    Be/X-ray binaries in Small Magellanic Cloud (McBride+, 2008)

Spectral distribution of Be/X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud. McBride V.A., Coe M.J., Negueruela I., Schurch M.P.E., McGowan K.E. <Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 388, 1198-1204 (2008)> =2008MNRAS.388.1198M 2008MNRAS.388.1198M
ADC_Keywords: Magellanic Clouds ; Binaries, X-ray ; Photometry Keywords: binaries: general - emission-line, Be - Magellanic Clouds Abstract: The spectral distributions of Be/X-ray binaries in the Large Magellanic Cloud and Galaxy have been shown to differ significantly from the distribution of isolated Be stars in the Galaxy. Population synthesis models can explain this difference in spectral distributions through substantial angular momentum loss from the binary system. In this work, we explore the spectral distribution of Be/X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using high signal-to-noise ratio spectroscopy of a sample of 37 optical counterparts to known X-ray pulsars. Our results show that the spectral distribution of Be/X-ray binaries in the SMC is consistent with that of the Galaxy, despite the lower metallicity environment of the SMC. This may indicate that, although the metallicity of the SMC is conducive to the formation of a large number of high-mass X-ray binaries, the spectral distribution of these systems is likely to be most strongly influenced by angular momentum losses during binary evolution, which are not particularly dependent on the local metallicity. Description: The data were acquired on the nights of 2006 September 13-15 and 2007 September 18 and 19 using the EFOSC2 faint object spectrograph mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, Chile. We used a grism with lines ruled at 600mm-1 and which covered the wavelength range λλ3095-5085Å. File Summary: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FileName Lrecl Records Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe 80 . This file table24.dat 90 37 Sample and properties of SMC Be/X-ray binary systems with well-defined optical counterparts (tables 2 and 4 of the paper) refs.dat 69 28 References -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Byte-by-byte Description of file:table24.dat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes Format Units Label Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1- 8 A8 --- Source Source name based on the X-ray pulse period 9 A1 --- n_Source [1] Note on Source (1) 11- 31 A21 --- Name Name 33- 35 A3 -- Tel Telescope used to determine the best position of the source (2) 36 A1 --- n_Tel [2] Note on Tel (1) 38- 43 A6 --- Refs References, in refs.dat file 45- 49 F5.2 mag Vmag V magnitude 51- 54 F4.2 mag e_Vmag rms uncertainty on Vmag 56- 60 F5.2 mag B-V B-V colour index 62- 65 F4.2 mag e_B-V rms uncertainty on B-V 67 A1 --- r_B-V [OMZ] Reference for colour, in refs.dat file 69- 71 I3 mm-1 Grism Ruling, in line/mm of the grism used 73- 82 A10 --- SpType Spectral classifications determined from blue spectra in this work unless otherwise noted 83 A1 --- r_SpType [abc] Reference for SpType, in refs.dat file 85- 90 A6 --- Lum Luminosity class from this work (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note (1): Note as follows: 1 = Be counterpart to radio and X-ray pulsar 2 = Two arcsec error circle - no ambiguity in optical counterparts Note (2): Telescope code as follows: C = Chandra X = XMM A = ASCA R = ROSAT O = optical identification by photometry or spectroscopy of objects within the error circle Note (3): Luminosity class as determined from the spectrum in the case of 600lines/mm data, and as determined from the absolute magnitude in the case of 400lines/mm data. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Byte-by-byte Description of file: refs.dat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes Format Units Label Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1- 2 A2 --- Ref Reference code 4- 22 A19 --- BibCode BibCode 24- 47 A24 --- Aut Author's name 49- 69 A21 --- Com Comments -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History: From electronic version of the journal In table2, RX J0058.8-7272 was corrected into RX J0057.8-7202
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 02-Jan-2010
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