NEAR-INFRARED COUNTERPARTS TO CHANDRA X-RAY SOURCES TOWARD THE GALACTIC CENTER. I. STATISTICS AND A CATALOG OF CANDIDATES

We present a catalog of 5184 candidate infrared counterparts to X-ray sources detected toward the Galactic center. The X-ray sample contains 9017 point sources detected in this region by the Chandra X-ray Observatory during the past decade, including data from a recent deep survey of the central 2 degrees x 0 degrees.8 of the Galactic plane. A total of 6760 of these sources have hard X-ray colors, and the majority of them lie near the Galactic center, while most of the remaining 2257 soft X-ray sources lie in the foreground. We cross-correlated the X-ray source positions with the 2MASS and SIRIUS near-infrared catalogs, which collectively contain stars with a 10 sigma limiting flux of K-s <= 15.6 mag. In order to distinguish absorbed infrared sources near the Galactic center from those in the foreground, we defined red and blue sources as those which have H - K-s >= 0.9 and < 0.9 mag, respectively. We find that 5.8% +/- 1.5% (2 sigma) of the hard X-ray sources have real infrared counterparts, of which 228 +/- 99 are red and 166 +/- 27 are blue. The red counterparts are probably comprised of Wolf-Rayet and O stars, high-mass X-ray binaries, and symbiotic binaries located near the Galactic center. Foreground X-ray binaries suffering intrinsic X-ray absorption could be included in the sample of blue infrared counterparts to hard X-ray sources. We also find that 39.4% +/- 1.0% of the soft X-ray sources have blue infrared counterparts; most of these are probably coronally active dwarfs in the foreground. There is a noteworthy collection of approximate to 20 red counterparts to hard X-ray sources near the Sagittarius B H II region, which are probably massive binaries that have formed within the last several Myr. For each of the infrared matches to X-ray sources in our catalog we derived the probability that the association is real, based on the source properties and the results of the cross-correlation analysis. These data are included in our catalog and will serve spectroscopic surveys to identify infrared counterparts to X-ray sources near the Galactic center.