The stellar population in the SARAO MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey
Okwudili D. Egbo, David A.H. Buckley, Paul J.Groot, Francesco Cavallaro, Patrick A. Woudt, Mark A. Thompson, Mubela Mutale, Michael Bietenholz

TL;DR
This study cross-matched MeerKAT radio sources with Gaia data to identify stellar counterparts, revealing a diverse population of radio-emitting stars in the Galactic plane, and highlighting the potential and limitations of current radio-optical matching methods.
Contribution
It presents the largest Galactic plane radio-optical crossmatch sample to date, combining two approaches to identify stellar counterparts to radio sources with detailed stellar classification.
Findings
629 potential stellar counterparts identified
Diverse stellar populations including OB stars, giants, YSOs, and white dwarfs
Active magnetically stars like RS CVn binaries and flare stars detected
Abstract
We report on optically selected stellar candidates of SARAO MeerKAT 1.3 GHz radio continuum survey sources of the Galactic plane. Stellar counterparts to radio sources are selected by cross-matching the MeerKAT source positions with \textit{Gaia} DR3, using two approaches. The first approach evaluated the probability of chance alignments between the radio survey and \textit{Gaia} sources and used AllWISE infrared colour-colour information to select potential stellar candidates. The second approach utilized a Monte Carlo method to evaluate the cross-matching reliability probability, based on populations of known radio-emitting stars. From the combined approaches, we found 629 potential stellar counterparts, of which 169 have existing SIMBAD classifications, making it the largest Galactic plane radio-optical crossmatch sample to date. A colour-magnitude analysis of the sample revealed a…
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