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Star-Forming Galaxies High-Mass X-Ray Binaries Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Based on a homogeneous set of X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet observations from Chandra, Spitzer, GALEX and 2MASS archives, the authors studied populations of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in a sample of 29 nearby star-forming galaxies and their relation with the star formation rate (SFR). In agreement with previous results, the authors find that HMXBs are a good tracer of the recent star formation activity in the host galaxy and their collective luminosity and number scale with the SFR, in particular, L<sub>X</sub> ~ 2.6 x 10<sup>39</sup> x SFR. However, the scaling relations still bear a rather large dispersion of rms ~ 0.4 dex, which the authors believe is of a physical origin. This table contains the catalog of 1055 compact X-ray sources detected within the D25 ellipse for galaxies of this sample which the authors used to construct the average X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of HMXBs with substantially improved statistical accuracy and better control of systematic effects than achieved in previous studies. The XLF follows a power law with slope of 1.6 in the log(L<sub>X</sub>) ~ 35 - 40 luminosity range with a moderately significant evidence for a break or cut-off at L<sub>X</sub> ~ 10<sup>40</sup> erg/s. As before, the authors did not find any features at the Eddington limit for a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. In their paper, the authors discuss the implications of their results for the theory of binary evolution. In particular, they estimate the fraction of compact objects that once during their lifetime experienced an X-ray active phase powered by accretion from a high mass companion and obtain a rather large number, f<sub>X</sub> ~ 0.2 x (0.1 Myr/tau<sub>x</sub>), where tau<sub>x</sub> is the life time of the X-ray active phase. This is about 4 orders of magnitude more frequent than in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). The authors also derive constrains on the mass distribution of the secondary star in HMXBs. Note that, in their paper, the authors estimate that ~ 300 of the 1055 sources are likely to be background AGNs (cosmic X-ray background or CXB sources) and that the majority (<~ 700) of the remaining ~ 750 sources are young HMXB systems associated with star formation in their host galaxies. This table was created by the HEASARC in March 2012 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/MNRAS/419/2095">CDS Catalog J/MNRAS/419/2095</a> file hmxb.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/sfgalhmxb
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 118b618e-7e73-4ba1-a685-ea1ab042721e
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/sfgalhmxb.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a20a424d212567c44a41bb24b0d975b3a31c5abe52023231576023ab58416c3f
Source Schema Version 1.1

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