Kinematics of Cataclysmic Variables in the Solar Neighborhood in the Gaia Era

TL;DR

This study uses Gaia DR3 data to analyze the kinematics of cataclysmic variables in the solar neighborhood, revealing their ages, velocity dispersions, and orbital period evolution, and comparing properties below and above the orbital period gap.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed kinematic analysis of CVs using Gaia data, estimating their ages, velocity dispersions, and orbital period evolution in the Galactic thin disk.

Findings

Non-magnetic CVs in the thin disk have a velocity dispersion of 46.33 km/s.

Thin disk CVs are younger (around 4 Gyr) than the local thin disk (6-9 Gyr).

Orbital period decreases with age at a rate of approximately 2.09×10^{-5} sec/yr.

Abstract

Using high-precision astrometric data from Gaia DR3 and updated systemic velocities from the literature, kinematical properties of cataclysmic variables (CVs) were investigated. By constraining the data according to the total space velocity error and Galactic population class, a reliable sample of data was obtained. Non-magnetic CVs located in the thin disk have been found to have a total space velocity dispersion of $\sigma_{\nu} = 46.33\pm4.23$ km s$^{-1}$, indicating that the thin disk CVs with a mean kinematical age of $\tau = 3.95\pm0.75$ Gyr are much younger than the local thin disk of the Galaxy with $\tau\sim$6-9 Gyr. Total space velocity dispersions of non-magnetic CVs belonging to the thin disk component of the Galaxy were found to be $\sigma_{\nu}=47.67\pm3.94$ and $\sigma_{\nu}=44.43\pm4.33$ km s$^{-1}$ for the systems below and above the orbital period gap, respectively, corresponding to kinematical ages of $\tau=4.19\pm0.71$ and $\tau=3.61\pm0.74$ Gyr. $\gamma$ velocity dispersions of the thin disk CVs below and above the gap were obtained $\sigma_{\gamma} = 27.52\pm2.28$ and $\sigma_{\gamma} = 25.65\pm2.44$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively. This study also shows that the orbital period is decreasing with increasing age, as expected from the standard theory. The age-orbital period relation for non-magnetic thin disk CVs was obtained as $dP/dt=-2.09\pm0.22\times10^{-5}$ sec yr$^{-1}$. However, a significant difference could not be found between the $\gamma$ velocity dispersions of the systems below and above the gap, which were calculated to be $\sigma_{\gamma} = 27.52\pm2.28$ and $\sigma_{\gamma} = 25.65\pm2.44$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively.