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Proceedings of The Extreme sky: Sampling the Universe above 10 keV — PoS(extremesky2009)

DOI: 10.22323/1.096.0098

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EXIST perspective for Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients

Journal article published in 2010 by V. Sguera ORCID, Lara Sidoli, A. Bazzano, P. Ubertini
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) are one of the most intriguing (and unexpected) results of the INTEGRAL mission. They are a new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries involving about 20 sources to date, with 8 firmly identified SFXTs and many candidates. They are composed by a massive OB supergiant star as companion donor and a compact object. At least four SFXTs host a neutron star, because X-ray pulsations have been discovered, while for the others a black hole cannot be excluded. SFXTs display short X-ray outbursts (compared with Be/X-ray transients) characterized by fast flares on brief timescales of hours and large flux variability typically in the range 1,000-100,000. The INTEGRAL/IBIS sensitivity allowed to catch only the bright flares (peaking at 1E36-1E37erg/s), without persistent or quiescent emission. The investigation of their properties, in particular the rapid variability time scales of their flaring activity, will greatly benefit from observations with the Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST), with the possibility to perform a long term and continuous as possible monitoring of the hard X-ray sky. ; Comment: Accepted for publication on PoS, Proceedings of "The Extreme sky: Sampling the Universe above 10 keV", held in Otranto (Italy) in October 2009