HST & Chandra obs. of elliptical galaxies

Our sample includes Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope observed galaxies at D<~25Mpc that have estimates of the globular cluster (GC) specific frequency (S_N_) reported in the literature. As such, we are able to directly classify X-ray-detected sources as being coincident with unrelated background/foreground objects, GCs, or sources that are within the fields of the galaxy targets.

We model the GC and field LMXB population XLFs for all galaxies separately and then construct global models characterizing how the LMXB XLFs vary with galaxy stellar mass and S_N_. We find that our field LMXB XLF models require a component that scales with S_N_ and has a shape consistent with that found for the GC LMXB XLF. We take this to indicate that GCs are "seeding" the galactic field LMXB population, through the ejection of GC LMXBs and/or the diffusion of the GCs in the galactic fields themselves.