The Smallest Mass Ratio Young Star Spectroscopic Binaries
Abstract
Using high resolution near-infrared spectroscopy with the Keck telescope, we have detected the radial velocity signatures of the cool secondary components in four optically identified pre-main-sequence, single-lined spectroscopic binaries. All are weak-lined T Tauri stars with well-defined center of mass velocities. The mass ratio for one young binary, NTTS 160905-1859, is M2/M1 = 0.18+/-0.01, the smallest yet measured dynamically for a pre-main-sequence spectroscopic binary. These new results demonstrate the power of infrared spectroscopy for the dynamical identification of cool secondaries. Visible light spectroscopy, to date, has not revealed any pre-main-sequence secondary stars with masses <0.5 M_sun, while two of the young systems reported here are in that range. We compare our targets with a compilation of the published young double-lined spectroscopic binaries and discuss our unique contribution to this sample.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0201324,
title = {The Smallest Mass Ratio Young Star Spectroscopic Binaries},
author = {L. Prato and M. Simon and T. Mazeh and I. S. McLean and D. Norman and S. Zucker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0201324},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in the April, 2002, ApJ; 6 figures