We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation, member institutions , and all contributors. Donate [Submitted on 6 Jun 2001 ( v1 ), last revised 9 Apr 2002 (this version, v2)]

Title: A dozen colliding wind X-ray binaries in the star cluster R136 in the 30Doradus region

View PDF Abstract: We analyzed archival Chandra X-ray observations of the central portion of the 30 Doradus region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image contains 20 X-ray point sources with luminosities between $5 \times 10^{32}$ and $2 \times 10^{35}$ erg s$^{-1}$ (0.2 -- 3.5 keV). A dozen sources have bright WN Wolf-Rayet or spectral type O stars as optical counterparts. Nine of these are within $\sim 3.4$pc of R136, the central star cluster of NGC2070. We derive an empirical relation between the X-ray luminosity and the parameters for the stellar wind of the optical counterpart. The relation gives good agreement for known colliding wind binaries in the Milky Way Galaxy and for the identified X-ray sources in NGC2070. We conclude that probably all identified X-ray sources in NGC2070 are colliding wind binaries and that they are not associated with compact objects. This conclusion contradicts Wang (1995) who argued, using ROSAT data, that two earlier discovered X-ray sources are accreting black-hole binaries. Five of the eighteen brightest stars in R136 are not visible in our X-ray observations. These stars are either single, have low mass companions or very wide orbits. The resulting binary fraction among early type stars is then unusually high (at least 70%).

Submission history

From: Simon Portegies Zwart [ view email ]
[v1] Wed, 6 Jun 2001 16:00:52 UTC (171 KB)
Tue, 9 Apr 2002 09:39:00 UTC (173 KB)
View a PDF of the paper titled A dozen colliding wind X-ray binaries in the star cluster R136 in the 30Doradus region, by Simon Portegies Zwart (UvA) and 2 other authors

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