Three new long-period X-ray pulsars discovered in the small magellanic cloud

The Small Magellanic Cloud is increasingly an invaluable laboratory for studying accreting and isolated X-ray pulsars. We add to the class of compact SMC objects by reporting the discovery of three new long-period X-ray pulsars detected with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The pulsars, with periods of 152, 304, and 565 s, all show hard X-ray spectra over the range 0.6-7.5 keV. The source positions of the three pulsars are consistent with known Hα emission sources, indicating they are likely to be Be-type X-ray binary star systems.