Multi-wavelength observations of the Galactic X-ray binaries IGR J20155+3827 and Swift J1713.4-4219

TL;DR

This study uses multi-wavelength observations, including X-ray and optical data, to classify two poorly understood Galactic X-ray transients, identifying one as a high-mass X-ray binary and the other as a low-mass X-ray binary.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates how combined archival and new multi-wavelength data can effectively classify previously poorly studied X-ray transients.

Findings

IGR J20155+3827 classified as a distant HMXB.

Swift J1713.4-4219 classified as an LMXB.

Multi-wavelength approach improves source classification accuracy.

Abstract

In recent years, thanks to the continuous surveys performed by INTEGRAL and Swift satellites, our knowledge of the hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray sky has greatly improved. As a result it is now populated with about 2000 sources, both Galactic and extra-galactic, mainly discovered by IBIS and BAT instruments. Many different follow-up campaigns have been successfully performed by using a multi-wavelength approach, shedding light on the nature of a number of these new hard X-ray sources. However, a fraction are still of a unidentified nature. This is mainly due to the lack of lower energy observations, which usually deliver a better constrained position for the sources, and the unavailability of the key observational properties, needed to obtain a proper physical characterization. Here we report on the classification of two poorly studied Galactic X-ray transients IGR J20155+3827 and Swift J1713.4-4219, for which the combination of new and/or archival X-ray and Optical/NIR observations have allowed us to pinpoint their nature. In particular, thanks to XMM\Newton archival data together with new optical spectroscopic and archival Optical/NIR photometric observations, we have been able to classify IGR J20155+3827 as a distant HMXB. The new INTEGRAL and Swift data collected during the 2019 X-ray outburst of Swift J1713.4-4219, in combination with the archival optical/NIR observations, suggest a LMXB classification for this source.