Study of the distribution of High Mass X-ray Binaries in the Galaxy

TL;DR

This study analyzes the spatial distribution of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) in the Milky Way, revealing their clustering with star-forming regions and providing insights into their formation, evolution, and migration influenced by galactic structures.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel spectral energy distribution fitting method to determine HMXB distances and absorption, and examines their correlation with star-forming complexes and spiral arms.

Findings

HMXBs are clustered with star-forming complexes within 0.3 kpc.

The typical distance between HMXB clusters is about 1.7 kpc.

Offsets between HMXBs and spiral arms help constrain their ages and migration due to supernova kicks.

Abstract

Observations of the high energy sky, mainly with the INTEGRAL satellite, have raised new questions about the formation and evolution of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs). The number of detected HMXBs of different types is now high enough to allow us to carry out a statistical analysis of their distribution in the Milky Way. For the first time, we derive the distance and absorption of a sample of HMXBs using a Spectral Energy Distribution fitting procedure, and we examine the correlation with the distribution of Star Forming Complexes (SFCs) in the Galaxy. We show that HMXBs are clustered with SFCs with a typical cluster size of 0.3 +/- 0.05 kpc and a characteristic distance between clusters of 1.7 +/- 0.3 kpc. Furthermore, we present an investigation of the expected offset between the position of spiral arms and HMXBs, allowing us to constrain age and migration distance due to supernova kick for some sources. These new methods will allow us to assess the influence of the environment on these high energy objects with unprecedented reliability.