Seven years with the Swift Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients project

Journal
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
DOI
Description
Acknowledgements I want to thank the whole XRT Team, D.N. Burrows and J.A. Nousek in primis , for believing we could deliver what we promised; the BAT Team, S.D. Barthelmy and H.A. Krimm first in line, for proposing application of the BAT special functions to the SFXT sample, and for their invaluable help and support with the BAT and BAT Transient Monitor data; the UVOT Team, for never missing a beat (with a cheer). I also want to thank all current and former collaborators in this endeavor, who contributed to the project and who have been teaching me so much: E. Bozzo, L. Ducci, P. Esposito, P.A. Evans, J.A. Kennea, C. Guidorzi, V. Mangano, S. Vercellone; L. Sidoli, A. Beardmore, M.M. Chester, G. Cusumano, C. Ferrigno, C. Pagani, K.L. Page, D.M. Palmer, V. La Parola, B. Sbarufatti. In particular I thank E. Bozzo, L. Ducci, and P. Esposito for a careful reading of the draft. I am much in debt to the Swift team duty scientists and science planners, truly unsung heroes in my opinion, for providing everything a proposer may possibly need (sometimes to the point of anticipating ToOs); and of course to Neil Gehrels, PI of this extraordinary and unique discovery machine, for running it as a tight but happy ship. I am very, very proud of being part of this crew. I thank the referee for comments that helped improve the paper, and also acknowledge financial contribution from contract ASI-INAF I/004/11/0.
Abstract
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are HMXBs with OB supergiant companions. I review the results of the Swift SFXT project, which since 2007 has been exploiting Swift's capabilities in a systematic study of SFXTs and supergiant X-ray binaries (SGXBs) by combining follow-ups of outbursts, when detailed broad-band spectroscopy is possible, with long-term monitoring campaigns, when the out-of-outburst fainter states can be observed. This strategy has led us to measure their duty cycles as a function of luminosity, to extract their differential luminosity distributions in the soft X-ray domain, and to compare, with unprecedented detail, the X-ray variability in these different classes of sources. I also discuss the ;seventh year crisis;, the challenges that the recent Swift observations are making to the prevailing models attempting to explain the SFXT behavior.
Volume
7
Start page
126
Uri
Url
Issn Identifier
2214-4048
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2015JHEAp...7..126R
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open.access
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