Margaret Lazzarini (Caltech)

High mass X-ray binaries (HMXBS) are systems that contain a compact object (neutron star or black hole) that accretes mass from a massive stellar companion. HMXBs are highly observable due to their bright X-ray luminosities, making them a key observational window into the complex process of massive binary stellar evolution. In Local Group galaxies we can combine high resolution, multiwavelength observations to characterize both the compact object and companion stars in these systems in the context of their host galaxies. In this talk Caltech's Caltech's Margaret Lazzarini will discuss her research. Caltech's Margaret Lazzarini will discuss the population demographics of HMXBs in M31 and M33 measured with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and ongoing observations with the DEIMOS optical spectrograph on Keck. With these observations we can constrain the compact object types, identify and characterize the HMXB companion stars, and measure the overall HMXB age distribution and production rate for these galaxies.