Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

We report on a campaign to identify the counterparts to the population of X-ray sources discovered at the centre of our Galaxy by Wang et al. [7] using Chandra. We have used deep, near infrared images obtained on VLT/ISAAC to identify candidate counterparts as astrometric matches to the X-ray positions. Follow up K-S-band spectroscopic observations of the candidate counterparts are used to search for accretions signatures in the spectrum, namely the Brackett-gamma emission line [1]. From our small initial sample, it appears that only a small percentage, similar to 2-3% of the similar to 1000 X-ray sources are high mass X-ray binaries or wind accreting neutron stars, and that the vast majority will be shown to be canonical low mass X-ray binaries and cataclysmic variables.