AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 129. LMXB's and Transient Sky
Oral, Thursday, January 9, 2003, 10:00-11:30am, 616-617

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[129.01] The Close Binary Population of Globular Clusters Revealed by Chandra

D. Pooley, W. Lewin (MIT), L. Homer, S. Anderson (UW Seattle), B. Margon (STScI), F. Verbunt (Utrecht), V. Kaspi (McGill), N. D'Amico (Bologna), B. Gaensler (CfA), S. Portegies Zwart, M. van der Klis (Amsterdam), S. McMillan (Drexel), J. Makino (Tokyo), D. Fox (Caltech), A. Filippenko (UC Berkeley), P. Hut (IAS)

I will report on our deep Chandra observations (down to LX\approx 4\times 1030 erg s-1) of the globular clusters NGC 5904, NGC 6266, and NGC 6366. These high resolution X-ray observations are the most efficient and effective means of discovering various populations of close binaries in globular clusters, such as cataclysmic variables, low-mass X-ray binaries, millisecond pulsars, and RS~CVn systems. Such binary systems play a key role in the evolution of a globular cluster. These particular clusters were chosen because they differ greatly in central concentration, size, and mass. When considered with our and others' previous Chandra observations of globular clusters, they form a large collection of data spanning a wide range of these physical parameters. For the first time, we are observing striking differences in the X-ray binary populations of different clusters. I will discuss these differences and what we can learn about globular cluster evolution from them.

We gratefully acknowledge support from NASA.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: dave@mit.edu

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