No Arabic abstract
There is now strong evidence that the close binary fraction (P < 10$^4$ days; a < 10 AU) of solar-type stars ($M_1$ = 0.6-1.5M$_{odot}$) decreases significantly with metallicity. Although early surveys showed that the observed spectroscopic binary (SB) fractions in the galactic disk and halo are similar (e.g., Carney-Latham sample), these studies did not correct for incompleteness. In this study, we examine five different surveys and thoroughly account for their underlying selection biases to measure the intrinsic occurrence rate of close solar-type binaries. We re-analyze: (1) a volume-limited sample of solar-type stars, (2) an SB survey of high-proper-motion stars, (3) various SB samples of metal-poor giants, (4) the APOGEE survey of radial velocity (RV) variables, and (5) Kepler eclipsing binaries (EBs). The observed APOGEE RV variability fraction and Kepler EB fraction both decrease by a factor of $approx$4 across $-$1.0 < [Fe/H] < 0.5 at the 22$sigma$ and 9$sigma$ confidence levels, respectively. After correcting for incompleteness, all five samples exhibit a quantitatively consistent anti-correlation between the intrinsic close binary fraction (a < 10 AU) and metallicity: $F_{rm close}$ = 53%$pm$12%, 40%$pm$6%, 24%$pm$4%, and 10%$pm$3% at [Fe/H] = $-$3.0, $-$1.0, $-$0.2 (mean field metallicity), and +0.5, respectively. We present fragmentation models that explain why the close binary fraction of solar-type stars strongly decreases with metallicity while the wide binary fraction, close binary fraction of OB stars, and initial mass function are all constant across $-$1.5 < [Fe/H] < 0.5. The majority of solar-type stars with [Fe/H] < $-$1.0 will interact with a stellar companion, which has profound implications for binary evolution in old and metal-poor environments such as the galactic halo, bulge, thick disk, globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, and high-redshift universe.
We use observations from the APOGEE survey to explore the relationship between stellar parameters and multiplicity. We combine high-resolution repeat spectroscopy for 41,363 dwarf and subgiant stars with abundance measurements from the APOGEE pipeline and distances and stellar parameters derived using textit{Gaia} DR2 parallaxes from cite{Sanders2018} to identify and characterise stellar multiples with periods below 30 years, corresponding to drvm$gtrsim$ 3 kms, where drvm is the maximum APOGEE-detected shift in the radial velocities. Chemical composition is responsible for most of the variation in the close binary fraction in our sample, with stellar parameters like mass and age playing a secondary role. In addition to the previously identified strong anti-correlation between the close binary fraction and feh, we find that high abundances of $alpha$ elements also suppress multiplicity at most values of feh sampled by APOGEE. The anti-correlation between $alpha$ abundances and multiplicity is substantially steeper than that observed for Fe, suggesting C, O, and Si in the form of dust and ices dominate the opacity of primordial protostellar disks and their propensity for fragmentation via gravitational stability. Near feh{} = 0 dex, the bias-corrected close binary fraction ($a<10$ au) decreases from $approx$ 100 per cent at alh{} = $-$0.2 dex to $approx$ 15 per cent near alh{} = 0.08 dex, with a suggestive turn-up to $approx$20 per cent near alh{} = 0.2. We conclude that the relationship between stellar multiplicity and chemical composition for sun-like dwarf stars in the field of the Milky Way is complex, and that this complexity should be accounted for in future studies of interacting binaries.
The metallicity dependence of the wide-binary fraction in stellar populations plays a critical role in resolving the open question of wide binary formation. In this paper, we investigate the metallicity ([Fe/H]) and age dependence of the wide-binary fraction (binary separations between $10^3$ and $10^4$ AU) for field F and G dwarfs within 500 pc by combining their metallicity and radial velocity measurements from LAMOST DR5 with the astrometric information from Gaia DR2. We show that the wide-binary fraction strongly depends on the metallicity: as metallicity increases, the wide-binary fraction first increases, peaks at [Fe/H]$simeq 0$, and then decreases at the high metallicity end. The wide-binary fraction at [Fe/H]$=0$ is about two times larger than that at [Fe/H]$=-1$ and [Fe/H]$=+0.5$. This metallicity dependence is dominated by the thin-disk stars. Using stellar kinematics as a proxy of stellar age, we show that younger stars have a higher wide-binary fraction at fixed metallicity close to solar. We propose that multiple formation channels are responsible for the metallicity and age dependence. In particular, the positive metallicity correlation at [Fe/H]$<0$ and the age dependence may be due to the denser formation environments and higher-mass clusters at earlier times. The negative metallicity correlation at [Fe/H]$>0$ can be inherited from the similar metallicity dependence of close binaries, and radial migration may play a role in enhancing the wide-binary fraction around the solar metallicity.
Recent work (Corradi et al. 2015, Jones et al. 2016) has shown that the phenomenon of extreme abundance discrepancies, where recombination line abundances exceed collisionally excited line abundances by factors of 10 or more, seem to be strongly associated with planetary nebulae with close binary central stars. To further investigate, we have obtained spectra of a sample of nebulae with known close binary central stars, using FORS2 on the VLT, and we have discovered several new extreme abundance discrepancy objects. We did not find any non-extreme discrepancies, suggesting that a very high fraction of nebulae with close binary central stars also have an extreme abundance discrepancy.
Binary stars play a vital role in astrophysical research, as a good fraction of stars are in binaries. Binary fraction (BF) is known to change with stellar mass in the Galactic field, but such studies in clusters require binary identification and membership information. Here, we estimate the total and spectral-type-wise high mass-ratio (HMR) BF ($f^{0.6}$) in 23 open clusters using unresolved binaries in color-magnitude diagrams using textit{Gaia} DR2 data. We introduce the segregation index (SI) parameter to trace mass segregation of HMR (total and mass-wise) binaries and the reference population. This study finds that in open clusters, (1) HMR BF for the mass range 0.4--3.6 Msun (early M to late B type) has a range of 0.12 to 0.38 with a peak at 0.12--0.20, (2) older clusters have a relatively higher HMR BF, (3) the mass-ratio distribution is unlikely to be a flat distribution and BF(total) $sim$ (1.5 to 2.5) $times f^{0.6}$, (4) a decreasing BF(total) from late B-type to K-type, in agreement with the Galactic field stars, (5) older clusters show radial segregation of HMR binaries, (6) B and A/F type HMR binaries show radial segregation in some young clusters suggesting a primordial origin. This study will constrain the initial conditions and identify the major mechanisms that regulate binary formation in clusters. Primordial segregation of HMR binaries could result from massive clumps spatially segregated in the collapse phase of the molecular cloud.
Binary stars plays important role in the evolution of stellar populations . The intrinsic binary fraction ($f_{bin}$) of O and B-type (OB) stars in LAMOST DR5 was investigated in this work. We employed a cross-correlation approach to estimate relative radial velocities for each of the stellar spectra. The algorithm described by cite{2013A&A...550A.107S} was implemented and several simulations were made to assess the performance of the approach. Binary fraction of the OB stars are estimated through comparing the uni-distribution between observations and simulations with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Simulations show that it is reliable for stars most of whom have $6,7$ and $8$ repeated observations. The uncertainty of orbital parameters of binarity become larger when observational frequencies decrease. By adopting the fixed power exponents of $pi=-0.45$ and $kappa=-1$ for period and mass ratio distributions, respectively, we obtain that $f_{bin}=0.4_{-0.06}^{+0.05}$ for the samples with more than 3 observations. When we consider the full samples with at least 2 observations, the binary fraction turns out to be $0.37_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$. These two results are consistent with each other in $1sigma$.