Supergiant Fast X-Ray Transients: A Common Behaviour or a Class of Objects?

INTEGRAL monitoring of the Galactic Plane is revealing a growing number of recurrent X-ray transients, characterised by short outbursts with very fast rise times (∼ tens of minutes) and typical durations of a few hours. A substantial fraction of these sources are associated with OB supergiants and hence define a new class of massive X-ray binaries, which we call Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients. Characterisation of the astrophysical parameters of their counterparts is underway 1. So far, we have found a number of late O and early B supergiants of different luminosities at a large range of distances. Nothing in their optical properties sets them apart from classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries. On the other hand, there is now rather concluding evidence that persistent supergiant X-ray binaries also show fast outbursts. This suggests a continuum of behaviours between typical persistent supergiant systems and purely transient systems, but offers very little information about the physical causes of the outbursts.