High precision orbital and physical parameters of double-lined spectroscopic binary stars - HD78418, HD123999, HD160922, HD200077 and HD210027

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel high-precision radial velocity technique for double-lined spectroscopic binary stars, enabling extremely accurate mass and orbital parameter measurements that surpass previous methods and rival pulsar system precision.

Contribution

The study presents a new iodine cell technique for double-line binaries, achieving unprecedented accuracy in mass and orbital parameter determinations by combining RVs with interferometric data.

Findings

Achieved 0.02% to 0.42% accuracy in m*sin(i) measurements.

Combined RVs and interferometry yielded mass accuracies of 0.06% to 0.5%.

Mass measurements rival those of relativistic double pulsar systems.

Abstract

We present high precision radial velocities (RVs) of double-lined spectroscopic binary stars HD78418, HD123999, HD160922, HD200077 and HD210027. They were obtained based on the high resolution echelle spectra collected with the Keck I/Hires, Shane/CAT/Hamspec and TNG/Sarge telescopes/spectrographs over the years 2003-2008 as a part of TATOOINE search for circumbinary planets. The RVs were computed using our novel iodine cell technique for double-line binary stars. The precision of the RVs is of the order of 1-10 m/s. Our RVs combined with the archival visibility measurements from the Palomar Testbed Interferometer allow us to derive very precise spectroscopic/astrometric orbital and physical parameters of the binaries. In particular, we derive the masses, the absolute K and H band magnitudes and the parallaxes. The masses together with the absolute magnitudes in the K and H bands enable us to estimate the ages of the binaries. These RVs allow us to obtain some of the most accurate mass determinations of binary stars. The fractional accuracy in m*sin(i) only and hence based on the RVs alone ranges from 0.02% to 0.42%. When combined with the PTI astrometry, the fractional accuracy in the masses ranges in the three best cases from 0.06% to 0.5%. Among them, the masses of HD210027 components rival in precision the mass determination of the components of the relativistic double pulsar system PSRJ0737-3039. In the near future, for double-lined eclipsing binary stars we expect to derive masses with a fractional accuracy of the order of up to ~0.001% with our technique. This level of precision is an order of magnitude higher than of the most accurate mass determination for a body outside the Solar System - the double neutron star system PSRB1913+16.