White Dwarfs Revealed in Gaia's Candidate Compact Object Binaries

TL;DR

This study uses Gaia and GALEX data to identify and characterize white dwarfs in wide binary systems with luminous companions, revealing new insights into dark remnant populations and binary evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining Gaia and GALEX data to identify and characterize white dwarf companions in wide binaries, correcting previous misclassifications.

Findings

Identified 15 white dwarf candidates with constrained properties.

Discovered 9 candidates with masses in the neutron star or black hole range.

Corrected five previous neutron star identifications to white dwarfs.

Abstract

Discovery and characterisation of black holes (BHs), neutron stars (NSs), and white dwarfs (WDs) with detached luminous companions (LCs) in wide orbits are exciting because they are important test beds for dark remnant (DR) formation physics as well as binary stellar evolution models. Recently, 187 candidates have been identified from Gaia's non-single star catalog as wide orbit (P_orb/days>45), detached binaries hosting DRs. We identify UV counterparts for 49 of these sources in the archival GALEX data. Modeling the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) spanning FUV-NUV to IR for these sources and stellar evolution models, we constrain the LC properties including mass, bolometric luminosity, and effective temperature for these 49 sources. Using the LC masses, and the astrometric mass function constrained by Gaia, we constrain the DR masses for these sources. We find that 9 have masses clearly in the NS or BH mass range. Fifteen sources exhibit significant NUV excess and 4 show excess both in FUV and NUV. The simplest explanation for these excess UV fluxes is that the DRs in these sources are WDs. Using SED modeling we constrain the effective temperature and bolometric luminosity for these 15 sources. Our estimated DR masses for all of these 15 sources are lower than the Chandrasekhar mass limit for WDs. Interestingly, five of these sources had been wrongly identified as neutron stars in literature.