Speaker
Description
The past decades have yielded a huge amount of information on the physics of X-ray binaries. The combination of X-ray variability measurements and spectroscopy, which has recently been supplemented with exciting X-ray polarization data, and multi-wavelength observations has allowed us to constrain the accretion flow physics and the phenomenological behavior of these sources. We have also been able to study the interaction with their donor stars, understand their progenitors, and have mapped out the populations of compact objects in our Galaxy and in the Universe. However, many open questions remain.
With the advent of new observational capabilities in the next 20 years in the electromagnetic spectrum, such as SKA, E-ELT, NewAthena, and CTAO, together with gravitational wave observatories such as ET, new avenues to further our understanding of X-ray binaries will become available.
In this talk I will discuss the next steps in X-ray binary research with these exciting facilities.