Binary parameters from astrometric and spectroscopic errors--candidate hierarchical triples and massive dark companions in Gaia DR3

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to estimate binary star parameters from Gaia DR3 data by combining astrometric and spectroscopic errors, identifying candidates for hierarchical triples and dark companions.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical and numerical approach to infer binary properties from errors and applies it to Gaia DR3, discovering new candidate systems with potential dark companions.

Findings

Good agreement between inferred and measured orbital parameters.

Identification of 4,641 candidate hierarchical triples and compact object pairs.

Refined selection yields a gold sample of 45 high-confidence candidates.

Abstract

We show how astrometric and spectroscopic errors introduced by an unresolved binary system can be combined to give estimates of the binary period and mass ratio. This can be performed analytically if we assume we see one or more full orbits over our observational baseline, or numerically for all other cases. We apply this method to Gaia DR3 data, combining the most recent astrometric and spectroscopic data. We compare inferred periods and mass ratios calculated using our method with orbital parameters measured for non-single stars in Gaia DR3 and find good agreement. Finally, we use this method to search the subset of the Gaia DR3 RVS dataset with rv_method_used=1 for compact object candidates. We select sources with significant astrometric and spectroscopic errors ($RUWE_{ast}>1.25$ and $RUWE_{spec}>2$), with large inferred mass ratios, and large inferred companion masses ($q>1$ and $M_c>3 M_\odot$) giving a catalogue of 4,641 candidate hierarchical triples and Main Sequence+Compact Object pairs. We apply more stringent cuts, and impose low levels of photometric variability to remove likely triples ($RUWE_{phot}<2$) producing a gold sample of 45 candidates.