Gaia's binary star renaissance

Fuente: arXiv
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Autor principal: El-Badry, Kareem
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author El-Badry, Kareem
author_facet El-Badry, Kareem
contents Stellar multiplicity is among the oldest and richest problems in astrophysics. Binary stars are a cornerstone of stellar mass and radius measurements that underpin modern stellar evolutionary models. Binaries are the progenitors of many of the most interesting and exotic astrophysical phenomena, ranging from type Ia supernovae to gamma ray bursts, hypervelocity stars, and most detectable stellar black holes. They are also ubiquitous, accounting for about half of all stars in the Universe. In the era of gravitational waves, wide-field surveys, and open-source stellar models, binaries are coming back stronger than a nineties trend. Much of the progress in the last decade has been enabled by the Gaia mission, which provides high-precision astrometry for more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. The Gaia data probe a wider range of binary separations and mass ratios than most previous surveys, enabling both an improved binary population census and discovery of rare objects. I summarize recent results in the study of binary stars brought about by Gaia, focusing in particular on developments related to wide ($a \gtrsim 100$ au) binaries, evidence of binarity from astrometric noise and proper motion anomaly, astrometric and radial velocity orbits from Gaia DR3, and binaries containing non-accreting compact objects. Limitations of the Gaia data, the importance of ground-based follow-up, and anticipated improvements with Gaia DR4 are also discussed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_12146
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Gaia's binary star renaissance
El-Badry, Kareem
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Stellar multiplicity is among the oldest and richest problems in astrophysics. Binary stars are a cornerstone of stellar mass and radius measurements that underpin modern stellar evolutionary models. Binaries are the progenitors of many of the most interesting and exotic astrophysical phenomena, ranging from type Ia supernovae to gamma ray bursts, hypervelocity stars, and most detectable stellar black holes. They are also ubiquitous, accounting for about half of all stars in the Universe. In the era of gravitational waves, wide-field surveys, and open-source stellar models, binaries are coming back stronger than a nineties trend. Much of the progress in the last decade has been enabled by the Gaia mission, which provides high-precision astrometry for more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. The Gaia data probe a wider range of binary separations and mass ratios than most previous surveys, enabling both an improved binary population census and discovery of rare objects. I summarize recent results in the study of binary stars brought about by Gaia, focusing in particular on developments related to wide ($a \gtrsim 100$ au) binaries, evidence of binarity from astrometric noise and proper motion anomaly, astrometric and radial velocity orbits from Gaia DR3, and binaries containing non-accreting compact objects. Limitations of the Gaia data, the importance of ground-based follow-up, and anticipated improvements with Gaia DR4 are also discussed.
title Gaia's binary star renaissance
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12146