Carbon Stars From Gaia DR3 and the Space Density of Dwarf Carbon Stars

TL;DR

This study uses Gaia DR3 data and machine learning to identify and catalog carbon stars, especially dwarf carbon stars, and estimates their local space density and distribution in the Milky Way.

Contribution

It introduces a new all-sky survey method combining spectral indices and machine learning to identify carbon stars and provides the first reliable estimate of dwarf carbon star space density.

Findings

Catalog of 43,574 carbon star candidates including dwarfs and giants.

Measured local dwarf carbon star density as approximately 2 per million cubic parsecs.

Determined a large disk scale height for dwarf carbon stars, indicating a thick disk distribution.

Abstract

Carbon stars (with atmospheric C/O$>1$) range widely in temperature and luminosity, from low mass dwarfs to asymptotic giant branch stars (AGB). The main sequence dwarf carbon (dC) stars have inherited carbon-rich material from an AGB companion, which has since transitioned to a white dwarf. The dC stars are far more common than C giants, but no reliable estimates of dC space density have been published to date. We present results from an all-sky survey for carbon stars using the low-resolution XP spectra from Gaia DR3. We developed and measured a set of spectral indices contrasting C$_{\rm 2}$ and CN molecular band strengths in carbon stars against common absorption features found in normal (C/O$<1$) stars such as CaI, TiO and Balmer lines. We combined these indices with the XP spectral coefficients as input to supervised machine-learning algorithms trained on a vetted sample of known C stars from LAMOST. We describe the selection of the carbon candidate sample, and provide a catalog of 43,574 candidates dominated by cool C giants in the Magellanic Clouds and at low galactic latitude in the Milky Way. We report the confirmation of candidate C stars using intermediate ($R\sim 1800$) resolution optical spectroscopy from the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, and provide estimates of sample purity and completeness. From a carefully-vetted sample of over 600 dCs, we measure their local space density to be $\rho_0\,=\,1.96^{+0.14}_{-0.12}\times10^{-6}\,\text{pc}^{-3}$ (about one dC in every local disk volume of radius 50\,pc), with a relatively large disk scale height of $H_z\,=\,856^{+49}_{-43}\,$pc.