Constraining the Variability and Binary Fraction of Galactic Center Young Stars
Abstract
We present constraints on the variability and binarity of young stars in the central 10 arcseconds (~0.4 pc) of the Milky Way Galactic Center (GC) using Keck Adaptive Optics data over a 12 year baseline. Given our experiment's photometric uncertainties, at least 36% of our sample's known early-type stars are variable. We identified eclipsing binary systems by searching for periodic variability. In our sample of spectroscopically confirmed and likely early-type stars, we detected the two previously discovered GC eclipsing binary systems. We derived the likely binary fraction of main sequence, early-type stars at the GC via Monte Carlo simulations of eclipsing binary systems, and find that it is at least 32% with 90% confidence.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.02441,
title = {Constraining the Variability and Binary Fraction of Galactic Center Young Stars},
author = {Abhimat K. Gautam and Tuan Do and Andrea M. Ghez and Jessica R. Lu and Mark R. Morris and Shoko Sakai and Gunther Witzel and Breann N. Sitarski and Samantha Chappell},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.02441},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Proceedings of IAU Symposium 322: The Multi-Messenger Astrophysics of the Galactic Centre, 2 pages, 1 figure