Speaker
Sylvain Chaty
Description
A previously unknown population of High-Mass X-ray Binaries
(HMXB) hosting
supergiant stars has been revealed during the last years,
with multi-wavelength
campaigns including high energy (INTEGRAL, Swift, XMM,
Chandra) and
optical/infrared (mainly ESO) observations, including
interferometric VLT
observations.
This population is constituted of obscured supergiant HMXB,
and some, so-called
supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs), exhibit short and
intense X-ray flares.
I will describe the observations of these HMXB, how they can
constrain the
accretion models (e.g. clumpy winds, transitory accretion
disc, magneto-centrifugal
barrier, etc), discuss their formation and evolution,
compare the observations to
results from population synthesis models, and finally
attempt to propose a scenario
to explain the properties of these high-energy sources.
Because these HMXB are the likely progenitors of Luminous
Blue Variables (LBVs),
and also related to compact object mergers and emission of
gravitational waves,
the knowledge of their formation and evolution is of prime
importance.
