The Low‐Mass X‐Ray Binary–Globular Cluster Connection. II. NGC 4472 X‐Ray Source Properties and Source Catalogs

We present the results of a Chandra/HST study of the point sources of the NGC4472. We identify 144 X-ray sources, 72 with HST matches. The optical data show1102 sources, 829 with globular cluster colors. Thirty matches are found -likely to be low mass X-ray binaries in globular clusters, while 42 have nooptical counterparts to V~25 and I~24 - likely predominantly LMXBs in the fieldstar population. Thus approximately 40% of the X-ray sources are in globularclusters and ~4% of the globular clusters contain X-ray sources. The blue GCsources may have harder X-ray spectra than the red GC sources. No significantdifferences are found between the X-ray properties of the field sources and ofthe GC sources. This study, along with our previous result from Paper I in thisseries on the similarity of the spatial profile of the field LMXBs, globularcluster LMXBs, and the globular clusters themselves suggest that a significantfraction of the observed low mass X-ray binaries in the field may be created ina globular cluster then ejected into the field by stellar interaction s;however, by comparing the results for NGC 4472 with those in several othergalaxies, we find tentative evidence for a correlation be tween the globularcluster specific frequency and the fraction of LMXBs in globular clusters, acorrelation which would be most easily explained if some of the field sourceswere generated in situ. We show that isolated accreting very massive blackholes are unlikely to be observable with current X-ray instrumentation and thatthese sources hence do not contaminate the LMXB population. We discuss thepossibility that several equatorial point sources may indicate the presence ofa disk wind responsible for the low radiative efficiency observed in thenucleus of this source. (abridged)Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, accepted to ApJ, full tables available upon request (will appear in electronic journal), minor changes from previous versio