Formation of Ultracompact X-ray Binaries in Dense Star Clusters

Details Formation of Ultracompact X-ray Binaries in Dense Star Clusters Formation of Ultracompact X-ray Binaries in Dense Star Clusters

2005-01-27

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501617v2

Astrophys.J. 621 (2005) L109-L112

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

4 pages, 1 figure, in emulateapj style. ApJ Letters, in press, includes corrections in proofs

Scientific paper

10.1086/429220

Bright, ultracompact X-ray binaries observed in dense star clusters, such as Galactic globular clusters, must have formed relatively recently, since their lifetimes as persistent bright sources are short (e.g., ~10^8 yr above 10^36 erg/s for a 1.4 Msun neutron star accreting from a degenerate helium companion with an initial mass of ~0.2 Msun). Therefore, we can use the present conditions in a cluster core to study possible dynamical formation processes for these sources. Here we show that direct physical collisions between neutron stars and red giants can provide a sufficient formation rate to explain the observed numbers of bright sources. These collisions produce tight, eccentric neutron star -- white dwarf binaries that decay to contact by gravitational radiation on timescales ~10^6-10^10 yr, usually shorter and often much shorter than the cluster age.

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