Modeling the High-energy Ionizing Output from Simple Stellar and X-Ray Binary Populations

Abstract

We present a methodology for modeling the joint ionizing impact due to a “simple X-ray population” (SXP) and its corresponding simple stellar population (SSP), where “simple” refers to a single age and metallicity population. We construct composite spectral energy distributions (SEDs) including contributions from ultraluminous X-ray sources and stars, with physically meaningful and consistent consideration of the relative contributions of each component as a function of instantaneous burst age and stellar metallicity. These composite SEDs are used as input for photoionization modeling with Cloudy, from which we produce a grid for the time- and metallicity-dependent nebular emission from these composite populations. We make the results from the photoionization simulations publicly available. We find that the addition of the SXP prolongs the high-energy ionizing output from the population—and correspondingly increases the intensity of nebular lines such as He ii λ1640,4686, [Ne v] λ3426,14.3 μm, and [O iv] 25.9 μm by factors of at least two relative to models without an SXP spectral component. This effect is most pronounced for instantaneous bursts of star formation on timescales >10 Myr and at low metallicities (∼0.1 Z ⊙), due to the imposed time- and metallicity-dependent behavior of the SXP relative to the SSP. We propose nebular emission line diagnostics accessible with JWST suitable for inferring the presence of a composite SXP + SSP, and we discuss how the ionization signatures compare to models for sources such as intermediate-mass black holes.