This paper is the third one in a series devoted to studying the properties of binaries involving M giants. We use a new set of orbits to construct the first (e-logP) diagram of an extensive sample of M giant binaries, to obtain their mass-function distribution, and to derive evolutionary constraints for this class of binaries and related systems. The orbital properties of binaries involving M giants were analysed and compared with those of related families of binaries (K giants, post-AGB stars, barium stars, Tc-poor S stars). The orbital elements of post-AGB stars and M giants are not different, which may very indicate that, for the considered sample of post-AGB binaries, the post-AGB star left the AGB at quite an early stage (M4 or so). Neither are the orbital elements of post-mass-transfer binaries like barium stars very different from those of M giants, suggesting that the mass transfer did not alter the orbital elements much, contrary to current belief. Finally, we show that binary systems with e < 0.4 log P - 1 (with periods expressed in days) are predominantly post-mass-transfer systems, because (i) the vast majority of barium and S systems match this condition, and (ii) these systems have companion masses peaking around 0.6 solar mass, as expected for white dwarfs. The latter property has been shown to hold as well for open-cluster binaries involving K giants, for which a lower bound on the companion mass may easily be set.
Improved orbits are presented for the visual binaries WDS 02366+1227, WDS 02434-6643, WDS 03244-1539, WDS 08507+1800, WDS 09128-6055, WDS 11532-1540, WDS 17375+2419, and WDS 22408-0333. The latest orbits for these binaries were demonstrating a great inconsistency between the systemic mass obtained through Kepler's Third Law and that calculated as a sum of their components' mass through standard mass-luminosity and mass-spectrum relationships. Our improvement allowed us to obtain consistent systemic masses for WDS 02434-6643 and WDS 09128-6055 without a need for changing the Hipparcos parallax.…
The Hipparcos catalog and its Double and Multiple System Annex (DMSA) lists 4099 components with individual proper motions and coordinates on the epoch 1991.25. Many of these long-period binary stars are also present in the Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2). Using the available relative positions and proper motions separated by 25.25 years, the equations of relative orbital motion can be solved for the two epoch eccentric anomalies, orbital period, and eccentricity. The method employs elimination of the linear Thiele-Innes unknowns and nonlinear optimization of the remaining condition equations. The q…
Based on a direct combination of the Hipparcos data with astrometric ground-based observational catalogues having epochs between 1938 and 1999 the preliminary orbits and component masses are calculated for 6 binaries with no previous orbit calculation: $ι$~Vir (HIP~69701) with period of 55 years, photocentric semi-major axis of 200 mas, relative semi-major axis of 830 mas and a dwarf secondary of 0.6 solar masses; $γ$~UMa (HIP~58001) -- 20.5 years, 90 mas, 460 mas and a dwarf secondary of 0.8 solar masses; $κ$~Del (HIP~101916) -- 45 years, 100 mas, 520 mas and a dwarf secondary of 0.4 solar ma…
This paper is a follow-up of the vast effort to collect radial velocity data for stars belonging to the Hipparcos survey. We aim at extending the orbital data available for binaries with M giant primaries. The data will be used in the companion papers of this series to (i) derive the binary frequency among M giants and compare it to that of K giants (Paper II), and (ii) analyse the eccentricity-period diagram and the mass-function distribution (Paper III). Keplerian solutions are fitted to radial-velocity data. However, for several stars, no satisfactory solution could be found, despite the fa…
A sample of 477 solar-type binaries within 67pc with projected separations larger than 50AU is studied by a new statistical method. Speed and direction of the relative motion are determined from the short observed arcs or known orbits, and their joint distribution is compared to the numerical simulations. By inverting the observed distribution with the help of simulations, we find that average eccentricity of wide binaries is 0.59+-0.02 and the eccentricity distribution can be modeled as f(e) ~= 1.2 e + 0.4. However, wide binaries containing inner subsystems, i.e. triple or higher-order multip…
In this work we present a study of binary systems in a metal-poor sample of solar type stars. The stars analyzed were rejected from two planet search samples because they were found to be binaries. Using available radial velocity and Hipparcos astrometric data, we apply different methods to find, for every binary system, a possible range of solutions for the mass of the companion and its orbital period. In one case we find that the solution depends on the Hipparcos data used: the old and new reductions give different results. Some candidate low-mass companions are found, including some close t…
This paper is the second one in a series devoted to the study of properties of binaries involving M giants. The binary frequency of field M giants is derived and compared with the binary fraction of K giants. Diagrams of the CORAVEL spectroscopic parameter Sb (measuring the average line-width) vs. radial-velocity standard deviation for our samples are used to define appropriate binarity criteria. These then serve to extract the binarity fraction among the M giants. Comparison is made to earlier data on K giants binarity frequency. The Sb parameter is discussed in relation to global stellar par…
We demonstrate the eclipsing binary detection performance of the Gaia variability analysis and processing pipeline using Hipparcos data. The automated pipeline classifies 1,067 (0.9%) of the 118,204 Hipparcos sources as eclipsing binary candidates. The detection rate amounts to 89% (732 sources) in a subset of 819 visually confirmed eclipsing binaries, with the period correctly identified for 80% of them, and double or half periods obtained in 6% of the cases.
Several classes of stellar binaries with post-main sequence (post-MS) components - millisecond pulsars with the white dwarf companions (MSP+WD) and periods P_b~30 d, binaries hosting post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars or barium stars with P_b~several yr - feature high eccentricities (up to 0.4) despite the expectation of their efficient tidal circularization during the AGB phase. It was suggested that the eccentricities of these binaries can be naturally excited by their tidal coupling to the circumbinary disk, formed by the material ejected from the binary. Here we critically reass…
Hot subdwarf-B stars in long-period binaries are found to be on eccentric orbits, even though current binary-evolution theory predicts those objects to be circularised before the onset of Roche-lobe overflow (RLOF). We aim to find binary-evolution mechanisms that can explain these eccentric long-period orbits, and reproduce the currently observed period-eccentricity diagram. Three different processes are considered; tidally-enhanced wind mass-loss, phase-dependent RLOF on eccentric orbits and the interaction between a circumbinary disk and the binary. The binary module of the stellar-evolution…
Eclipsing binaries are observed to have a range of eccentricities and spin-orbit misalignments (stellar obliquities). Whether such properties are primordial, or arise from post-formation dynamical interactions remains uncertain. This paper considers the scenario in which the binary is the inner component of a hierarchical triple stellar system, and derives the requirements that the tertiary companion must satisfy in order to raise the eccentricity and obliquity of the inner binary. Through numerical integrations of the secular octupole-order equations of motion of stellar triples, coupled with…
Proper motions are computed and collected in a catalog using the Hipparcos positions (epoch 1991.25) and URAT1 positions (epoch 2012.3 to 2014.6). The goal is to obtain a significant improvement on the proper motion accuracy of single stars in the northern hemisphere, and to identify new astrometric binaries perturbed by orbital motion. For binaries and multiple systems, the longer baseline of Tycho2 (~ 100 yr) makes it more reliable despite its larger formal uncertainties. The resulting proper motions obtained for 67,340 stars have a consequent gain in accuracy by a factor of ~ 3 compared to …
We study the orbital evolution of hierarchical quadruple systems composed of two binaries on a long mutual orbit, where each binary acts as a Kozai-Lidov (KL) perturber on the other. We find that the coupling between the two binaries qualitatively changes the behavior of their KL cycles. The binaries can experience coherent eccentricity oscillations as well as excursions to very high eccentricity that occur over a much larger fraction of the parameter space than in triple systems. For a ratio of outer to inner semi-major axes of 10 to 20, about 30 to 50% of equal-mass quadruples reach eccentri…
We develop stellar population models to predict the number of binaries with a single luminous member is Gaia and Hipparcos. Our models yield dozens of detections of black hole - luminous companion binaries (BHLC) and hundreds to thousands of neutron star - luminous companion binaries (NSLC) with Gaia. Interestingly, our models also yield a single detection of BHLC binary with Hipparcos, and a few NSLC binaries. We also show how the statistical distribution of detected binaries with a single luminous companion can be used to constrain the formation process of neutron stars and black holes.
We use a cross-calibration of Hipparcos and Gaia DR2 astrometry for $β$ Pic to measure the mass of the giant planet $β$ Pic b $(13\pm3$ $M_{\rm Jup})$ in a comprehensive joint orbit analysis that includes published relative astrometry and radial velocities. Our mass uncertainty is somewhat higher than previous work because our astrometry from the Hipparcos-Gaia Catalog of Accelerations accounts for the error inflation and systematic terms that are required to bring the two data sets onto a common astrometric reference frame, and because we fit freely for the host-star mass $(1.84\pm0.05$ $M_{\…
The predicted orbital-period distribution of the subdwarf-B (sdB) population is bi-modal with a peak at short (< 10 days) and long (> 500 days) periods. Observationally, many short-period sdB systems are known, but only few wide sdB binaries have been studied in detail. Based on a long-term monitoring program the wide sdB sample has been increased, finding an unexpected correlation between the eccentricity and period. In this article we present the orbital solution and spectral analysis of four new systems, BD-7.5977, EC11031-1348, TYC2084-448-1 and TYC3871-835-1, and update the orbital soluti…
Type I outbursts in Be/X-ray binaries are usually associated with the eccentricity of the binary orbit. The neutron star accretes gas from the outer parts of the decretion disk around the Be star at each periastron passage. However, this mechanism cannot explain type I outbursts that have been observed in nearly circular orbit Be/X-ray binaries. With hydrodynamical simulations and analytic estimates we find that in a circular orbit binary, a nearly coplanar disk around the Be star can become eccentric. The extreme mass ratio of the binary leads to the presence of the 3:1 Lindblad resonance ins…
Most studies of mass transfer in binary systems assume circular orbits at the onset of Roche lobe overflow. However, there are theoretical and observational indications that mass transfer could occur in eccentric orbits. In particular, eccentricity could be produced via sudden mass loss and velocity kicks during supernova explosions, or Lidov-Kozai (LK) oscillations in hierarchical triple systems, or, more generally, secular evolution in multiple-star systems. However, current analytic models of eccentric mass transfer are faced with the problem that they are only well defined in the limit of …
Hipparcos astrometric binaries were observed with the NICI adaptive optics system at Gemini-S, completing the work of Paper I (Tokovinin et al. 2012). Among the 65 F, G, K dwarfs within 67pc of the Sun studied here, we resolve 18 new sub-arcsecond companions, re-measure 7 known astrometric pairs, and establish the physical nature of yet another three wider companions. The 107 astrometric binaries targeted at Gemini so far have 38 resolved companions with separations under 3". Modeling shows that bright enough companions with separations on the order of an arcsecond can perturb the Hipparcos as…
We develop Bayesian statistical methods for discovering and assigning probabilities to non-random (e.g., physical) stellar companions. These companions are either presently bound or were previously bound. The probabilities depend on similarities in corrected proper motion parallel and perpendicular to the brighter component's motion, parallax, and the local phase-space density of field stars. Control experiments are conducted to understand the behavior of false positives. The technique is applied to the Hipparcos Catalogue within 100 pc. This is the first all-sky survey to locate escaped compa…
Common envelope evolution (CEE) is believed to be an important stage in the evolution of binary/multiple stellar systems. Following this stage, the CE is thought to be ejected, leaving behind a compact binary (or a merger product). Although extensively studied, the CEE process is still little understood, and although most binaries have non-negligible eccentricity, the effect of initial eccentricity on the CEE has been little explored. Moreover, most studies assume a complete circularization of the orbit by the CE onset, while observationally such eccentricities are detected in many post-CE bin…
The orbits of five single-lined spectroscopic binaries have recently been determined. We now use astrometric measurements that were collected with the Hipparcos satellite to constrain the systems' mass ratios and secondary masses. The barycentric astrometric orbits of three binary systems, HD 140667, HD 158222, and HD 217924, are fully determined and precise estimates of their mass ratios are obtained. Follow-up of these systems with infrared spectroscopy could yield model-independent dynamical masses for all components.
Distribution of eccentricities of very wide (up to 10 kau) low-mass binaries in the solar neighborhood is studied using the catalog of El-Badry and Rix (2018) based on Gaia. Direction and speed of relative motions in wide pairs contain statistical information on the eccentricity distribution, otherwise inaccessible owing to very long orbital periods. It is found that the eccentricity distribution is close to the linear (thermal) one f(e) = 2e$ However, pairs with projected separations <200 au have less eccentric orbits, while f(e) for very wide pairs appears to be slightly super-thermal, with …
The orbital parameters of binaries at intermediate periods ($10^2$--$10^3$ d) are difficult to measure with conventional methods and are very incomplete. We have undertaken a new survey, applying our pulsation timing method to {\it Kepler} light curves of 2224 main-sequence A/F stars and found 341 non-eclipsing binaries. We calculate the orbital parameters for 317 PB1 systems (single-pulsator binaries) and 24 PB2s (double-pulsators). The method reaches down to small mass ratios $q=0.02$ and yields a highly homogeneous sample. We parametrize the mass-ratio distribution using both inversion and …
Eccentricity of wide binaries is difficult to measure due to their long orbital periods. With Gaia's high-precision astrometric measurements, eccentricity of a wide binary can be constrained by the angle between the separation vector and the relative velocity vector (the $v$-$r$ angle). In this paper, by using the $v$-$r$ angles of wide binaries in Gaia Early Data Release 3, we develop a Bayesian approach to measure the eccentricity distribution as a function of binary separations. Furthermore, we infer the eccentricities of individual wide binaries and make them publicly available. Our result…
About a century ago, Jeans (1919) discovered that if binary stars reach a state approximating energy equipartition, for example through many dynamical encounters that exchange energy, their eccentricity distribution can be described by : dN/de = 2e. This is referred to as the thermal eccentricity distribution, and has been widely used for initial conditions in theoretical investigations of binary stars. However, observations suggest that the eccentricity distributions of most observed binaries, and particularly those with masses < 5 Msun, are flatter than thermal and follow more closely to a u…
We report the very first analysis of 27 eclipsing binary systems with high eccentricities that sometimes reach up to 0.8. The orbital periods for these systems range from 1.4 to 37 days, and the median of the sample is 10.3 days. Star CzeV3392 (= UCAC4 623 022784), for example, currently is the eclipsing system with the highest eccentricity (e = 0.22) of stars with a period shorter than 1.5 days. We analysed the light curves of all 27 systems and obtained the physical parameters of both components, such as relative radii, inclinations, or relative luminosities. The most important parameters ap…
Star formation occurs via fragmentation of molecular clouds, which means that the majority of stars born are a members of binaries. There is growing evidence that planets might form in circumprimary disks of medium-separation binaries. The tidal forces caused by the secondary generally act to distort the originally circular disk to an eccentric one. To infer the disk eccentricity from high-res NIR spectroscopy, we calculate the fundamental band emission lines of the CO molecule emerging from the atmosphere of the disk. We model circumprimary disk evolution under the gravitational perturbation …
The eccentricity, periastron angle, orbital inclination, mass ratio, stellar temperatures and relative stellar radii of 12 eclipsing eccentric binaries were determined on the basis of Kepler data. The analysis of their out-of-eclipse variability led to the following results: (i) KIC 10490980 exhibits rotational (spot-type) variability; (ii) Four new heartbeat stars were found: KIC 9344623 and KIC 10296163, which have wide tidally induced light humps and KIC 9119405 and KIC 9673173, which have narrow "W-shape" features; (iii) KIC 4932691 shows oscillations with approximately the 18th harmonic o…
A subset of 51 Hipparcos astrometric binaries among FG dwarfs within 67pc has been surveyed with the NICI adaptive optics system at Gemini-S, directly resolving for the first time 17 sub-arcsecond companions and 7 wider ones. Using these data together with published speckle interferometry of 57 stars, we compare the statistics of resolved astrometric companions with those of a simulated binary population. The fraction of resolved companions is slightly lower than expected from binary statistics. About 10% of astrometric companions could be "dark" (white dwarfs and close pairs of late M-dwarfs)…
We have compiled a sample of 16 orbits for very low-mass stellar (<0.1 Msun) and brown dwarf binaries, enabling the first comprehensive study of the eccentricity distribution for such objects. We find that very low-mass binaries span a broad range of eccentricities (0.03<e<0.83), with a median eccentricity of 0.34. We examine potential observational biases in this sample, and for visual binaries we show through Monte Carlo simulations that appropriate selection criteria result in all eccentricities being equally represented (<5% difference between input and output e distributions). The orbits …
Radial velocity (RV) monitoring of solar-type visual binaries has been conducted at the CTIO/SMARTS 1.5-m telescope to study short-period systems. Data reduction is described, mean and individual RVs of 163 observed objects are given. New spectroscopic binaries are discovered or suspected in 17 objects, for some of them orbital periods could be determined. Subsystems are efficiently detected even in a single observation by double lines and/or by the RV difference between the components of visual binaries. The potential of this detection technique is quantified by simulation and used for statis…
Future Gaia and Legacy Survey of Space and Time data releases, together with wide area spectroscopic surveys, will deliver large samples of resolved binary stars with phase space coordinates, albeit with low-cadence. Given an eccentricity law $f(ε)$, we derive properties of (i) the velocity distribution $v/\sqrt{G M/r}$ normalised by the value for a circular orbit at the measured separation $r$; (ii) the astrometric acceleration distributions $a/\left(G M/r^2\right)$ again normalised to the circular orbit value. Our formulation yields analytic predictions for the full statistical distribution …
We present an evaluation of the performance of an automated classification of the Hipparcos periodic variable stars into 26 types. The sub-sample with the most reliable variability types available in the literature is used to train supervised algorithms to characterize the type dependencies on a number of attributes. The most useful attributes evaluated with the random forest methodology include, in decreasing order of importance, the period, the amplitude, the V-I colour index, the absolute magnitude, the residual around the folded light-curve model, the magnitude distribution skewness and th…
Aims. This program originated as the north pole region extension of the established exoplanet survey using 1.8 m telescope at Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO). The aim of our paper is to find exoplanets in northern circumpolar stars with a precise radial velocity (RV) survey. Methods. We have selected about 200 northern circumpolar stars with the following criteria: Dec. > 70 degree, 0.6 < B-V < 1.6, HIPPARCOS_scat < 0.05 magnitude, and 5.0 < mv < 7.0. The high-resolution, fiber-fed Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph (BOES) was used for the RV survey. Chromospheric activi…
Eccentricity and Inclination Excitation of Stellar Orbits around merging Black-Hole Binaries
School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）；Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics in Ministry of Education, Nanjing University（南京大学现代天体学与天体物理教育部重点实验室）
Preparing for the expected wealth of Gaia detections, we consider here a simple algorithm for classifying unresolved astrometric binaries with main-sequence (MS) primary into three classes: binaries with a probable MS secondary, with two possible values for the mass ratio; probable hierarchical triple MS systems with an astrometric secondary as a close binary, with a limited range of mass-ratio values; and binaries with a compact-object secondary, with a minimal value of the mass ratio. This is done by defining a unit-less observational parameter 'Astrometric Mass-Ratio Function' (AMRF), $\mat…
We study the orbital stability of a non-zero mass, close-in circular orbit planet around an eccentric orbit binary for various initial values of the binary eccentricity, binary mass fraction, planet mass, planet semi--major axis, and planet inclination by means of numerical simulations that cover $5 \times 10^4$ binary orbits. For small binary eccentricity, the stable orbits that extend closest to the binary (most stable orbits) are nearly retrograde and circulating. For high binary eccentricity, the most stable orbits are highly inclined and librate near the so-called generalised polar orbit …
Precise measurement of the fundamental parameters of stellar systems, including mass and radius, depends critically on how well the stellar distances are known. Astrometry from space provides parallax measurements of unprecented accuracy, from which distances can be derived, initially from the Hipparcos mission, with further refinement of that analysis provided by van Leeuwen in 2007. The publication of the Gaia DR2 catalogue promises a dramatic improvement in the available data. We have recalculated the dynamical masses of a sample of 1 700 close visual binary stars using Gaia DR2 and compare…
The population of young stars near the Supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the Galactic Center (GC) has presented an unexpected challenge to theories of star formation. Kinematics measurements of these stars have revealed a stellar disk structure (with an apparent 20% disk membership) that has provided important clues to the origin of these mysterious young stars. However many of the apparent disk properties are difficult to explain, including the low disk membership fraction and the high eccentricities, given the youth of this population. Thus far, all efforts to derive the properties of this d…
We solve the equations of two-dimensional hydrodynamics describing a circumbinary disk accreting onto an eccentric, equal-mass binary. We compute the time rate of change of the binary semimajor axis $a$ and eccentricity $e$ over a continuous range of eccentricities spanning $e=0$ to $e=0.9$. We find that binaries with initial eccentricities $e_0 \lesssim 0.1$ tend to $e=0$, where the binary semimajor axis expands. All others are attracted to $e \approx 0.4$, where the binary semimajor axis decays. The $e \approx 0.4$ attractor is caused by a rapid change in the disk response from a nearly orig…
[Abridged]We investigate the long-term secular dynamics and Lidov-Kozai(LK) eccentricity oscillations of quadruple systems composed of two binaries at quadrupole and octupole order in the perturbing Hamiltonian. We show that the fraction of systems reaching high eccentricities is enhanced relative to triple systems, over a broader range of parameter space. We show that this fraction grows with time, unlike triple systems evolved at quadrupole order. This is fundamentally because with their additional degrees of freedom, quadruple systems do not have a maximal set of commuting constants of the …
Aims: Our goal is to investigate how the strength of episodic accretion bursts depends on eccentricity. Methods: We investigate the binary trigger hypothesis in longer-period (>20yr) binaries by carrying out three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of the formation of low-mass binary stars down to final separations of $\sim$10$\au$, including the effects of gas turbulence and magnetic fields. We ran two simulations with an initial turbulent gas core of one solar mass each and two different initial turbulent Mach numbers, M = 0.1 and M=0.2, for 6500yr after protostar formation.…
The Gaia mission recently revealed an excess population of equal-mass "twin" wide binaries, with mass ratio $q\gtrsim 0.95$, extending to separations of at least 1000 AU. The origin of this population is an enigma: twin binaries are thought to form via correlated accretion in circumbinary disks, but the typical observed protostellar disks have radii of $\sim100$ AU, far smaller than the separations of the widest twins. Here, we infer the eccentricity distribution of wide twins from the distribution of their $v$-$r$ angles, i.e., the angle between the components' separation and relative velocit…
