Confirmation of six Be X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

The X-ray binary population of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) contains a large number of massive X-ray binaries and the recent survey of the SMC by XMM-Newton has resulted in almost 50 more tentative high mass X-ray binary candidates. Using probability parameters from Haberl & Sturm (2016) together with the optical spectra and timing in this work, we confirm six new massive X-ray binaries in the SMC. We also report two very probable binary periods; of 36.4d in XMM 1859 and of 72.2 d in XMM 2300. These Be X-ray binaries are likely part of the general SMC population which rarely undergoes an X-ray outburst.

6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (3)

• The VLT-FLAMES Survey of Massive Stars: Observations centered on the Magellanic Cloud clusters NGC 330, NGC 346, NGC 2004, and the N11 region
• Spectral distribution of Be/X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• On the metallicity dependence of HMXBs

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Binarity at Low Metallicity (BLOeM) -- Multiplicity properties of Oe and Be stars
• eROSITA calibration and performance verification phase: High-mass X-ray binaries in the Magellanic Clouds
• SRG/eROSITA discovery of 164 s pulsations from the SMC Be/X-ray binary XMMU J010429.4-723136
• An X-ray view of the 2021 outburst of SXP 15.6: constraints on the binary orbit and magnetic field of the Neutron Star
• SXP 15.6 -- an accreting pulsar close to spin equilibrium?