Exploring accretion theory with X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud

The understanding of the accretion process on to compact objects in binary systems is an important part of modern astrophysics. Theoretical work, primarily that of Ghosh & Lamb, has made clear predictions for the behaviour of such systems which have been generally supported by observational results of considerably varying quality from galactic accreting pulsar systems. In this work, a much larger homogeneous population of such objects in the Small Magellanic Cloud is used to provide more demanding tests of the accretion theory. The results are extremely supportive of the theoretical models and provide useful statistical insights into the manner in which accreting pulsars behave and evolve.