Galactic Centre X-ray Sources

We report on a campaign to identify the counterparts to the population of X-ray sources discovered at the centre of our Galaxy by Wang et al. using Chandra. We have used deep, near infrared images obtained on VLT/ISAAC to identify candidate counterparts as astrometric matches to the X-ray positions. Follow up KS-band spectroscopic observations of the candidate counterparts are used to search for accretions signatures in the spectrum, namely the Brackett-gamma emission line. From our small initial sample, it appears that only a small percentage, ~ 2 - 3% of the ~ 1000 X-ray sources are high mass X-ray binaries or wind accreting neutron stars, and that the vast majority will be shown to be canonical low mass X-ray binaries and cataclysmic variables.