Selection Effects on the Orbital Period Distribution of Low Mass Black Hole X-ray Binaries

Abstract

We investigate the lack of observed low mass black hole binary systems at short periods ( < 4 hours) by comparing the observed orbital period distribution of 17 confirmed low mass Black hole X-ray Binaries (BHXBs) with their implied period distribution after correcting for the effects of extinction of the optical counterpart, absorption of the X-ray outburst and the probability of detecting a source in outburst. We also draw samples from two simple orbital period distributions and compare the simulated and observed orbital period distributions. We predict that there are >200 and <3000 binaries in the Galaxy with periods between 2 and 3 hours, with an additional ~600 objects between 3 and 10 hours

9 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• The origin and fate of short-period low-mass black-hole binaries
• Orbital Period and Outburst Luminosity of Transient Low Mass X-ray Binaries
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Low-Mass X-ray Binaries
• The Swift Bulge Survey: Motivation, Strategy, and First X-ray Results
• The X-ray binary population in the Galactic Center revealed through multi-decade observations
• A 2-hr binary period for the black hole transient MAXI J0637-430
• The relation between outburst rate and orbital period in low-mass X-ray binary transients
• Catalog of outbursts of neutron star LMXBs
• Astrometry of variable compact radio sources: A search for Galactic black hole X-ray binaries