Multiple Star Systems in the Orion Nebula

This work presents an interferometric study of the massive-binary fraction in the Orion Trapezium Cluster with the recently comissioned GRAVITY instrument. We observe a total of 16 stars of mainly OB spectral type. We find three previously unknown companions for $theta ^1$ Ori B, $theta ^2$ Ori B, and $theta ^2$ Ori C. We determine a separation for the previously suspected companion of NU Ori. We confirm four companions for $theta ^1$ Ori A, $theta ^1$ Ori C, $theta ^1$ Ori D, and $theta ^2$ Ori A, all with substantially improved astrometry and photometric mass estimates. We refine the orbit of the eccentric high-mass binary $theta ^1$ Ori C and we are able to derive a new orbit for $theta ^1$ Ori D. We find a system mass of 21.7 $M_{odot}$ and a period of $53$ days. Together with other previously detected companions seen in spectroscopy or direct imaging, eleven of the 16 high-mass stars are multiple systems. We obtain a total number of 22 companions with separations up to 600 AU. The companion fraction of the early B and O stars in our sample is about 2, significantly higher than in earlier studies of mostly OB associations. The separation distribution hints towards a bimodality. Such a bimodality has been previously found in A stars, but rarely in OB binaries, which up to this point have been assumed to be mostly compact with a tail of wider companions. We also do not find a substantial population of equal-mass binaries. The observed distribution of mass ratios declines steeply with mass, and like the direct star counts, indicates that our companions follow a standard power law initial mass function. Again, this is in contrast to earlier findings of flat mass ratio distributions in OB associations. We exclude collision as a dominant formation mechanism but find no clear preference for core accretion or competitive accretion.

On the Origin of Young Stars at the Galactic Center

The center of our galaxy is home to a massive black hole, SgrA*, and a nuclear star cluster containing stellar populations of various ages. While the late type stars may be too old to have retained memory of their initial orbital configuration, and hence formation mechanism, the kinematics of the early type stars should reflect their original distribution. In this contribution we present a new statistic which uses directly-observable kinematical stellar data to infer orbital parameters for stellar populations, and is capable of distinguishing between different origin scenarios. We use it on a population of B-stars in the Galactic center that extends out to large radii (0.5 pc) from the massive black hole. We find that the high K-magnitude population form an eccentric distribution, suggestive of a Hills binary-disruption origin.

Constraining the dark cusp in the Galactic Center by long-period binaries

Massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic nuclei are believed to be surrounded by a high density stellar cluster, whose mass is mostly in hard-to-detect faint stars and compact remnants. Such dark cusps dominate the dynamics near the MBH: a dark cusp in the Galactic center (GC) of the Milky Way would strongly affect orbital tests of General Relativity there; on cosmic scales, dark cusps set the rates of gravitational wave emission events from compact remnants that spiral into MBHs, and they modify the rates of tidal disruption events, to list only some implications. A recently discovered long-period massive young binary (P_12 <~ 1 yr, M_12 ~ O(100 M_sun), T_12 ~ 6x10^6 yr), only ~0.1 pc from the Galactic MBH (Pfuhl et al 2013), sets a lower bound on the 2-body relaxation timescale there, min t_rlx ~ (P_12/M_12)^(2/3)T_12 ~ 10^7 yr, and correspondingly, an upper bound on the stellar number density, max n ~ few x 10^8/<M_star^2> 1/pc^3, based on the binarys survival against evaporation by the dark cusp. However, a conservative dynamical estimate, the drain limit, implies t_rlx > O(10^8) yr. Such massive binaries are thus too short-lived and tightly bound to constrain a dense relaxed dark cusp. We explore here in detail the use of longer-period, less massive and longer-lived binaries (P_12 ~ few yr, M_12 ~ 2-4 M_sun, T_12 ~ 10^8-10^10 yr), presently just below the detection threshold, for probing the dark cusp, and develop the framework for translating their future detections among the giants in the GC into dynamical constraints.

On the origin of the B-stars in the Galactic center

We present a new directly-observable statistic which uses sky position and proper motion of stars near the Galactic center massive black hole to identify populations with high orbital eccentricities. It is most useful for stars with large orbital periods for which dynamical accelerations are difficult to determine. We apply this statistic to a data set of B-stars with projected radii 0.1 < p < 25 (~0.004 - 1 pc) from the massive black hole in the Galactic center. We compare the results with those from N-body simulations to distinguish between scenarios for their formation. We find that the scenarios favored by the data correlate strongly with particular K-magnitude intervals, corresponding to different zero-age main-sequence (MS) masses and lifetimes. Stars with 14 < mK < 15 (15 - 20 solar masses, t_{MS} = 8-13 Myr) match well to a disk formation origin, while those with mK > 15 (<15 solar masses, t_{MS} >13 Myr), if isotropically distributed, form a population that is more eccentric than thermal, which suggests a Hills binary-disruption origin.