The effect of binaries on the dynamical mass determination of star clusters

TL;DR

This study investigates how binary star systems influence the estimation of star cluster masses, revealing significant overestimations in sparse clusters due to binary orbital motions, while dense clusters are less affected.

Contribution

The paper quantifies the impact of binary stars on dynamical mass estimates of star clusters using numerical simulations across various densities.

Findings

Binaries cause up to tenfold overestimation in sparse clusters.

Dense clusters (>10^7 stars/pc3) are minimally affected by binaries.

Intermediate-density clusters experience 10-100% overestimation due to binaries.

Abstract

The total mass of distant star clusters is often derived from the virial theorem, using line-of-sight velocity dispersion measurements and half-light radii. Although most stars form in binary systems, this is mostly ignored when interpreting the observations. The components of binary stars exhibit orbital motion, which may increase the measured velocity dispersion, and may therefore result in a dynamical mass overestimation. In this paper we quantify the effect of neglecting the binary population on the derivation of the dynamical mass of a star cluster. We simulate star clusters numerically, and study the dependence of the derived dynamical mass on the properties of the binary population. We find that the presence of binaries plays a crucial role for very sparse clusters with a stellar density comparable to that of the field star population (~0.1 stars/pc3), as the velocity dispersion is fully dominated by the binary orbital motion. For such clusters, the dynamical mass may overestimate the true mass by up to an order of magnitude. For very dense clusters (>10^7 stars/pc3), binaries do not affect the dynamical mass estimation significantly. For clusters of intermediate density (0.1-10^7 stars/pc3), the dynamical mass can be overestimated by 10-100%, depending on the properties of the binary population.