Binary stars in Upper Scorpius [SSA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1909.12700


To address the statistics of binary stars in the 8-Myr old Upper Scorpius star formation region, we conducted speckle-interferometric survey of 614 association members more massive than 0.4 M_sun (spectral types earlier than M3V) based on the list of Luhman et al. (2018). We resolved 187 pairs, 55 of those are new discoveries. Using also the published data and the Gaia DR2, a catalog of 250 physical binaries is produced. We carefully estimated detection limits for each target and studied binary statistics in the separation range from 0.06″ to 20″ (9 to 2800 au), as well as clustering at larger separations. The frequency of companions with mass ratios q>0.3 closer than 50 au reaches 0.2 per decade of separation (1.4X more than for the field solar-type stars) and does not depend on the mass. At wider separations from 100 to 10^4 au, the separation distribution and companion fraction resemble those of solar-type stars in the field. However, unlike in the field, we found a deficit of binaries with q>0.7 at separations of ~500 au, compared to smaller and larger separations. The distribution of q clearly depends on the separation, with a preference of larger $q$ and a larger fraction of twins with q>0.95 at smaller separations. The binary population of Upper Scorpius differs from binaries in the field in several ways, proving that binary statistics is not universal.

Read this paper on arXiv…

A. Tokovinin and C. Briceno
Mon, 30 Sep 19
21/55

Comments: Submitted to AJ. 17 pages, 19 Figures, 9 tables (incl. 4 electronic tables)