Binary Star Population with Common Proper Motion in Gaia DR2

TL;DR

This paper presents a catalog of 10,358 common proper motion star pairs within 100 parsecs of the Sun from Gaia DR2, analyzing their properties and the excess of similar-mass pairs, known as twins.

Contribution

It provides a homogeneous catalog of wide binary stars from Gaia DR2 and investigates the mass ratio distribution, especially the excess of twin systems, with comparison to models.

Findings

Identified an excess of twin stars with similar masses.

The excess of twins decreases with increasing separation.

The observed twin excess cannot be explained by selection effects alone.

Abstract

We describe a homogeneous catalog compilation of common proper motion stars based on Gaia DR2. A preliminary list of all pairs of stars within the radius of 100 pc around the Sun with a separation less than a parsec was compiled. Also, a subset of comoving pairs, wide binary stars, was selected. The clusters and systems with multiplicity larger than 2 were excluded from consideration. The resulting catalog contains 10358 pairs of stars. The catalog selectivity function was estimated by comparison with a set of randomly selected field stars and with a model sample obtained by population synthesis. The estimates of the star masses in the catalogued objects, both components of which belong to the main-sequence, show an excess of "twins", composed by stars with similar masses. This excess decreases with increasing separation between components. It is shown that such an effect cannot be a consequence of the selectivity function only and does not appear in the model where star formation of similar masses is not artificially preferred. The article is based on the talk presented at the conference "Astrometry yesterday, today, tomorrow" (Sternberg Astronomical Institute of the Moscow State University, October 14-16, 2019).