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The population of Be/X-ray binaries shows strong evidence of bimodality,especially in the spin period of neutron stars. Several physical mechanisms mayproduce this bimodality. The most favored candidate mechanisms are two distinctsupernova channels or different accretion modes of the neutron stars inBe/X-ray binaries. Investigating the kinematics of these systems may providesome additional insight into the physics of this bimodality. If the twoBe/X-ray binary subpopulations arise from two distinct supernova types, thenthe two subpopulations should have different peculiar (systemic) velocities.This can be tested either directly, by measuring the velocity of the system, orindirectly, by measuring the position of the system with respect to itsbirthplace. Using the most recent Gaia dataset and the newest catalogs of SmallMagellanic Cloud (SMC) star clusters, we analyzed the tangential peculiarvelocities of Be/X-ray binaries in the Galaxy and the positions of Be/X-raybinaries in the SMC. We used the distance of the system from the nearest youngstar cluster as a proxy to the tangential velocity of the system. We appliedstatistical testing to investigate whether the two subpopulations that aredivided by the spin of the neutron star are also kinematically distinct. Thereis evidence that the two subpopulations are indeed kinematically distinct.However, the tangential peculiar velocities of the two subpopulations are thereverse from what is expected from the distinct supernova channel hypothesis.We find some marginal evidence ($p \approx$~0.005) that the Galactic Be/X-raybinaries from the short-spin subpopulation have systematically higher peculiarvelocities than the systems from the long-spin subpopulation. The same effect,but weaker, is also recovered for the SMC Be/X-ray binaries for all consideredcluster catalogs.

Kinematic distinction of the two subpopulations of X-ray pulsars