INTEGRAL insight into the inner parts of the Galaxy. High mass X-ray binaries

¹ Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya 84/32, 117810 Moscow, Russia e-mail: lutovinov@hea.iki.rssi.ru
² Max-Planck-Institute für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85740 Garching bei München, Germany

Received: 18 November 2004
Accepted: 4 August 2005

Abstract

Since its launch INTEGRAL has devoted a significant fraction of its observing time to the Galactic plane region. We present the results of INTEGRAL observations of the inner spiral arms of the Galaxy (Norma, Scutum and Sagittarius) with attention to high mass X-ray binaries. The increased sensitivity of the survey and possibility to detect absorbed sources significantly enlarged our sample of HMXBs in comparison with previous studies. For some absorbed sources we present for the first time high quality broadband (1–100 keV) energy spectra. We confirm pulsations of the X-ray flux of IGR J16358-4726, discovered by CHANDRA, and report discovery of pulsations with a period of  s from IGR J16465-4507. We confirm that the Galactic high mass X-ray binary distribution is significantly different from the distribution of low mass X-ray binaries concentrated in the Galactic Center. A large fraction of detected high mass X-ray binaries are absorbed sources.