High-Mass X-ray Binaries population in the Galaxy.

We study high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in the Galaxy using data of the INTEGRAL observatory. High sensitivity survey of the whole Galaxy with a possibility to detect absorbed sources significantly enlarged our sample of HMXBs in a comparison with the previous studies. Large fraction of detected high mass X-ray binaries is highly photoabsorbed. We investigated the HMXBs distribution along the Galactic plane and found their strong concentrations toward Galactic spiral arms, confirming previous results of Grimm et al. (2002) obtained using smaller sample of sources. We conclude that the mapping of Galactic HMXBs should be important tool to trace the star formation regions at the opposite side of the Galaxy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]