Stacked radial source density profiles of the CXB subtracted LMXBs in the sample galaxies (crosses). The upper and lower panels correspond to all the sources and sources brighter than 5 × 10³⁸ erg/s, respectively. The profiles are not corrected for incompleteness. The predicted distributions of LMXBs based on the K_S-band light are plotted with solid histograms. They take into account the source detection incompleteness, as described in Sect. 3.1, and therefore can be directly compared with observed profile. An excess of LMXBs beyond ~4r_e is present for all sources, but is absent for bright sources.