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Description
Based on a homogeneous set of X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet observations from Chandra, Spitzer, GALEX and 2MASS archives, the authors studied populations of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in a sample of 29 nearby star-forming galaxies and their relation with the star formation rate (SFR). In agreement with previous results, the authors find that HMXBs are a good tracer of the recent star formation activity in the host galaxy and their collective luminosity and number scale with the SFR, in particular, L<sub>X</sub> ~ 2.6 x 10<sup>39</sup> x SFR. However, the scaling relations still bear a rather large dispersion of rms ~ 0.4 dex, which the authors believe is of a physical origin. This table contains the catalog of 1055 compact X-ray sources detected within the D25 ellipse for galaxies of this sample which the authors used to construct the average X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of HMXBs with substantially improved statistical accuracy and better control of systematic effects than achieved in previous studies. The XLF follows a power law with slope of 1.6 in the log(L<sub>X</sub>) ~ 35 - 40 luminosity range with a moderately significant evidence for a break or cut-off at L<sub>X</sub> ~ 10<sup>40</sup> erg/s. As before, the authors did not find any features at the Eddington limit for a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. In their paper, the authors discuss the implications of their results for the theory of binary evolution. In particular, they estimate the fraction of compact objects that once during their lifetime experienced an X-ray active phase powered by accretion from a high mass companion and obtain a rather large number, f<sub>X</sub> ~ 0.2 x (0.1 Myr/tau<sub>x</sub>), where tau<sub>x</sub> is the life time of the X-ray active phase. This is about 4 orders of magnitude more frequent than in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). The authors also derive constrains on the mass distribution of the secondary star in HMXBs. Note that, in their paper, the authors estimate that ~ 300 of the 1055 sources are likely to be background AGNs (cosmic X-ray background or CXB sources) and that the majority (<~ 700) of the remaining ~ 750 sources are young HMXB systems associated with star formation in their host galaxies. This table was created by the HEASARC in March 2012 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/MNRAS/419/2095">CDS Catalog J/MNRAS/419/2095</a> file hmxb.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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