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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2016
Be X-ray binaries have the following general characteristics of interest for evolutionary scenarios: the spectral type of the non-compact star is B2 - 09 (e), the orbital periods are large, ranging from 16 to 581 days, the orbital eccentricities can be large, which could be related to the fact that the X-ray stages are transient; the masses of the optical components range from 10 to 20 M⊙ and their radii are relatively small (5 - 10 R⊙). The optical luminosity is lower than 3 x 10 4L⊙.