The statistical properties of early-type stars from LAMOST DR8

TL;DR

This study analyzes the statistical properties of early-type stars using a large, homogeneous spectroscopic dataset from LAMOST DR8, revealing how binary fraction varies with temperature and metallicity, and examining their distribution characteristics.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intrinsic binary fraction and distribution functions of early-type stars from LAMOST DR8, highlighting dependencies on stellar parameters.

Findings

Binary fraction increases with effective temperature.

Binary fraction positively correlates with metallicity.

Most stars have low or high projected velocities, indicating different stellar evolution processes.

Abstract

Massive binary stars play a crucial role in many astrophysical fields. Investigating the statistical properties of massive binary stars is essential to trace the formation of massive stars and constrain the evolution of stellar populations. However, no consensus has been achieved on the statistical properties of massive binary stars, mainly due to the lack of a large and homogeneous sample of spectroscopic observations. We study the intrinsic binary fraction $f_{\rm b}^{\rm in}$ and distributions of mass ratio $f(q)$ and orbital period $f(P)$ of early-type stars (comprised of O-, B-, and A-type stars) and investigate their dependences on effective temperature $T_{\rm eff}$, stellar metallicity [M/H], and the projection velocity $v\sin{i}$, based on the homogeneous spectroscopic sample from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) Data Release Eight (DR8). We found that $f_{\rm b}^{\rm in}$ increases with increasing $T_\mathrm{eff}$. The binary fraction is positively correlated with metallicity for spectra in the sample. Over all the $v\sin{i}$ values we considered, the $f_{\rm b}^{\rm in}$ have constant values of $\sim$50\%. It seems that the binary population is relatively evenly distributed over a wide range of $v\sin{i}$ values, while the whole sample shows that most of the stars are concentrated at low values of $v\sin{i}$ (probably from strong wind and magnetic braking of single massive stars) and at high values of $v\sin{i}$ (likely from the merging of binary stars). Stellar evolution and binary interaction may be partly responsible for this.There are no correlations found between $\pi$($\gamma$) and $T_{\rm eff}$, nor for $\pi$($\gamma$) and [M/H]. The uncertainties of the distribution decrease toward a larger sample size with higher observational cadence.