INTEGRAL @ INAF-IASF Milano: from Archives to Science

Abstract

In this work, we give an overview of the INTEGRAL archival activities performed at INAF-IASF Milano, along with highlights of the scientific results obtained on High Mass X-ray Binaries. A few years after the launch of INTEGRAL, in order to increment and ease the exploitation of the data at INAF-IASF Milano, we prepared and maintained an INTEGRAL archive named ’GOLIA’. This gave us full control over what was being done and how, and enabled unexpected discoveries and systematic studies, stimulating new investigations and collaborations. Indeed, GOLIA allowed us to discover the (currently only) outburst periodicity from a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient: IGRJ11215-5952. Starting from this discovery, and thanks to the population study approach offered by such an archive, we undertook a journey to understand Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients within the wider scenario of High Mass X-ray Binaries, tackling several long-term aspects: cumulative luminosity distributions, energy and temporal properties of bright flares, large-scale wind structures. Given the very productive outcome of such an approach, we decided to build a second generation archive in IASF Milano, named ANITA (A New InTegral Archive), with improved hardware and software performances.