088375

We propose to observe the complete sample of confirmed binary Be stars with sdO companions. We aim to probe the essentials of binary evolution theory which predicts that Be-type stars are the products of close binary evolution and that a significant fraction of them have hot companions which were stripped of hydrogen during a mass exchange event. The proposed survey will lead to a characterization of X-ray emission from Be+sdO binaries and establishing their X-ray properties. Furthermore we propose to measure the X-ray spectra of two prototypical Be+sdO systems phi Per and o Pup to measure the hot plasma temperatures and emission measure and to validate a hypothesis about stellar wind collisions in Be binaries. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]