The Zoo of Compact Objects and X-ray Binaries in the Center of the Milky Way
Abstract
The Galactic Center (GC) harbors the highest concentration and a rich variety of compact objects such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs in our galaxy. The compact objects and their binary systems in the GC are best studied in the X-ray band due to the long distance of 8 kpc and the large amount of gas and dust in between. Over the past two decades, various X-ray telescopes such as Chandra, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, Swift, and Suzaku have conducted extensive surveys in the GC region. Chandra, for instance, detected over 10,000 X-ray point sources in the central few degrees, with most of them believed to be cataclysmic variables (CVs) and low-mass X-ray binaries. I will present our investigations on the X-ray source populations in the central pc to over 100 pc away from Sgr A*. Some of our recent results have implications for the formation, dynamics, and evolution of compact objects in the vicinity of Sgr A*, the nuclear star cluster, and beyond.