The Astronomical Journal· 2018Q1
Binary Companions of Evolved Stars in APOGEE DR14: Search Method and Catalog of ∼5000 Companions
- 3,704citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2018year
Short summary
A new Monte Carlo sampler, 'The Joker', successfully identified ~5000 likely stellar companions to evolved stars using sparse radial velocity data from APOGEE DR14.
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Key points
- A new Monte Carlo sampler, 'The Joker', is introduced for analyzing sparse radial velocity data.
- The sampler was applied to 96,231 red giant stars from APOGEE DR14 with >=3 spectroscopic epochs.
- The search identified 320 companions with confidently determined properties.
- An additional 4898 stars were identified as likely having companions, requiring more data for full characterization.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract Multi-epoch radial velocity measurements of stars can be used to identify stellar, substellar, and planetary-mass companions. Even a small number of observation epochs can be informative about companions, though there can be multiple qualitatively different orbital solutions that fit the data. We have custom-built a Monte Carlo sampler ( The Joker ) that delivers reliable (and often highly multimodal) posterior samplings for companion orbital parameters given sparse radial velocity data. Here we use The Joker to perform a search for companions to 96,231 red giant stars observed in the APOGEE survey (DR14) with ≥3 spectroscopic epochs. We select stars with probable companions by making a cut on our posterior belief about the amplitude of the variation in stellar radial velocity induced by the orbit. We provide (1) a catalog of 320 companions for which the stellar companion’s properties can be confidently determined, (2) a catalog of 4898 stars that likely have companions, but would require more observations to uniquely determine the orbital properties, and (3) posterior samplings for the full orbital parameters for all stars in the parent sample. We show the characteristics of systems with confidently determined companion properties and highlight interesting systems with candidate compact object companions.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. The Astronomical Journal, 2018 · DOI ↗
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Field: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy and AstrophysicsPhysics and Astronomy