Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.
Astronomers from Argentina and France studied the evolution of a high-mass X-ray binaries. The results of the study, published December 22 on the arXiv pre-print repository, provide important insights into the origin of this object and could help scientists understand the evolution of X-ray binaries in general.
A normal star or a white dwarf can be used to transfer mass to a black hole. Astronomers use the mass of the companion star to divide them into two types of X-ray binaries.
There is an XRB located some 10,000 light years away from the Earth that consists of a compact object and an optical star. GX 301-2 is an HMXB because of the fact that it is a hypergiant star with a mass greater than 31 solar mass.
The show features rapid spin-up episodes and X-ray pulsations. One of the HMXBs known to date is one of the most eccentric systems and its orbital period was measured to be over four weeks. The properties of GX 301-2 are very different from those of other XRBs.
The origin and evolution history of the system was the focus of a group of astronomer led by Adolfo Simaz Bunzel of the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy. The code MESA was used for this purpose.
The code MESA was used to evolve the binaries from their initial stages to the core collapse scenario. The researchers incorporated a natal kick distribution based on observations to continue the evolution during the X-ray binaries phase.
The study found that the progenitor of the neutron star is required to transfer most of its envelope to the companion in order for the system to work well. The progenitor had a mass in the range of 23 to 30 solar mass and an initial mass ratio of 0.8 to 0.9, according to the astronomer. A black hole would most likely be created by higher initial mass.
The initial orbital period is thought to be less than five days. The companion's mass isn't increased enough above this limit to be within the range. The star would fail to reach the core-collapse stage if it had less than two days to go.
The researchers looked at the strength of the star's kick. At birth, it is assumed that the stars will have a significant kick in their velocities. The investigated system may have had a kick strength of 450 km/s.
The authors of the paper pointed out how unique the properties of GX 301-2 were.
It is estimated that the chances of having HMXBs with properties similar to the ones found in GX 301–2 are very low. The scientists concluded that they don't expect to find another one with the same properties.
The Improving Simultaneous Machine Translation with Monolingual Data was published in the arXiv. There is a book titled "arxiv.2212.01188."
Journal information: arXiv
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