A Catalog of RV Variable Star Candidates from LAMOST

TL;DR

This paper presents a catalog of 80,702 candidate RV variable stars identified from LAMOST DR4 data, using radial velocity variations to estimate variability probabilities, with over 80% purity, aiding large-scale stellar variability studies.

Contribution

The study introduces a new catalog of RV variable star candidates from LAMOST DR4, with a novel probability estimation method and validation through cross-identification, enhancing large-scale variability detection.

Findings

Catalog of 80,702 RV candidates with >80% purity

77% binary systems and 7% pulsating stars identified

Detection rate analysis based on cross-matched data

Abstract

RV variable stars are important in astrophysics. The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) spectroscopic survey has provided ~ 6.5 million stellar spectra in its Data Release 4 (DR4). During the survey, ~ 4.7 million unique sources were targeted and ~ 1 million stars observed repeatedly. The probabilities of stars being RV variables are estimated by comparing the observed radial velocity variations with the simulated ones. We build a catalog of 80,702 RV variable candidates with probability greater than 0.60 by analyzing the duplicate-observed multi-epoch sources covered by the LAMOST DR4. Simulations and cross-identifications show that the purity of the catalog is higher than 80%. The catalog consists of 77% binary systems and 7% pulsating stars as well as 16% pollution by single stars. 3,138 RV variables are classified through cross-identifications with published results in literatures. By using the 3,138 sources common to both LAMOST and a collection of published RV variable catalogs we are able to analyze LAMOST's RV variable detection rate. The efficiency of the method adopted in this work relies not only on the sampling frequency of observations but also periods and amplitudes of RV variables. With the progress of LAMOST, Gaia and other surveys, more and more RV variables would will be confirmed and classified. This catalog is valuable for other large-scale surveys, especially for RV variable searches. The catalog will be released according to the LAMOST Data Policy via http://dr4.lamost.org.