Stellar Encounter Rate in Galactic Globular Clusters
  The high stellar densities in the cores of globular clusters cause
significant stellar interactions. These stellar interactions can produce close
binary mass-transferring systems involving compact objects and their progeny,
such as X-ray binaries and radio millisecond pulsars. Comparing the numbers of
these systems and interaction rates in different clusters drives our
understanding of how cluster parameters affect the production of close
binaries. In this paper we estimate stellar encounter rates (Gamma) for 124
Galactic globular clusters based on observational data as opposed to the
methods previously employed, which assumed "King-model" profiles for all
clusters. By deprojecting cluster surface brightness profiles to estimate
luminosity density profiles, we treat "King-model" and "core-collapsed"
clusters in the same way. In addition, we use Monte-Carlo simulations to
investigate the effects of uncertainties in various observational parameters
(distance, reddening, surface brightness) on Gamma, producing the first catalog
of GC stellar encounter rates with estimated errors. Comparing our results with
published observations of likely products of stellar interactions (numbers of
X-ray binaries, numbers of radio millisecond pulsars, and gamma-ray luminosity)
we find both clear correlations and some differences with published results.
