Effect of Photon Rocket in X-ray Binaries

Forty Years of X-Ray Binaries

In 2012 it was forty years ago that the discovery of the first X-ray binary Centaurus X-3 became known. That same year it was discovered that apart from the High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) there are also Low-Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs), and that Cygnus X-1 is most probably a black hole. By 1975 also the new class of Be/X-ray binaries was discovered. After this it took 28 years before ESAs INTE...

X-ray Binaries

Echoes in X-ray Binaries

We present a method of analysing the correlated X-ray and optical/UV variability in X-ray binaries, using the observed time delays between the X-ray driving lightcurves and their reprocessed optical echoes. This allows us to determine the distribution of reprocessing sites within the binary. We model the time-delay transfer functions by simulating the distribution of reprocessing regions, using...

Correlated X-ray and Optical Variability in X-ray Binaries

It has long been known that X-ray and optical/UV variability in active X-ray binaries is sometimes correlated. The expectation has been that this arises from rapid reprocessing of X-rays into longer wavelength photons, and hence that the lags between the bandpasses can be used to reconstruct an echomap of the binary, revealing the geometry and spatial scale of reprocessing sites. I will review ...

Hard X-Ray Lightcurves of High Mass X-Ray Binaries

Using the 9 years of continuous data now available from the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) aboard CGRO, we have measured orbital periods and produced folded lightcurves for 8 High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXB). Given the length of the datasets, our determinations are based on many more binary orbits than previous investigations. Thus our source detections have high statistical signi...