Low-mass X-ray binaries in the bulge of the Milky Way
Revnivtsev, M. and Lutovinov, A. and Churazov, E. and Sazonov, S. and Gilfanov, M. and Grebenev, S. and Sunyaev, R.
Keywords
binaries: general, stars: luminosity function, mass function, Galaxy: bulge, X-rays: binaries, X-rays: general
Abstract
We study the population of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) in the Galactic bulge using the deep survey of this region by the IBIS telescope aboard the INTEGRAL observatory. Thanks to the increased sensitivity with respect to previous surveys of this field, we succeeded to probe the luminosity function (LF) of LMXBs down to ~7e34 erg/sec in the 17-60keV energy band. The slope dlog N/dlog L=-0.96_s16/0.20 measured in the 1e35-1e37 erg/sec range confirms that the LMXB LF flattens below L_x
