TY - JOUR
T1 - Revealing Black Holes with Gaia
AU - Breivik, Katelyn
AU - Chatterjee, Sourav
AU - Larson, Shane L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the anonymous referee for help in clarifying key points. K.B. and S.L.L. acknowledge support from NASA Grant NNX13AM10G. S.C. acknowledges support from NASA issued by Hubble Space Telescope Archival research grant HST-AR-14555.001-A.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/11/20
Y1 - 2017/11/20
N2 - We estimate the population of black holes with luminous stellar companions (BH-LCs) in the Milky Way (MW) observable by Gaia. We evolve a realistic distribution of BH-LC progenitors from zero-age to the current epoch taking into account relevant physics, including binary stellar evolution, BH-formation physics, and star formation rate, in order to estimate the BH-LC population in the MW today. We predict that Gaia will discover between 3800 and 12,000 BH-LCs by the end of its mission, depending on BH natal kick strength and observability constraints. We find that the overall yield, and distributions of eccentricities and masses of observed BH-LCs, can provide important constraints on the strength of BH natal kicks. Gaia-detected BH-LCs are expected to have very different orbital properties compared to those detectable via radio, X-ray, or gravitational-wave observations.
AB - We estimate the population of black holes with luminous stellar companions (BH-LCs) in the Milky Way (MW) observable by Gaia. We evolve a realistic distribution of BH-LC progenitors from zero-age to the current epoch taking into account relevant physics, including binary stellar evolution, BH-formation physics, and star formation rate, in order to estimate the BH-LC population in the MW today. We predict that Gaia will discover between 3800 and 12,000 BH-LCs by the end of its mission, depending on BH natal kick strength and observability constraints. We find that the overall yield, and distributions of eccentricities and masses of observed BH-LCs, can provide important constraints on the strength of BH natal kicks. Gaia-detected BH-LCs are expected to have very different orbital properties compared to those detectable via radio, X-ray, or gravitational-wave observations.
KW - Galaxy: stellar content
KW - astrometry
KW - methods: numerical
KW - methods: statistical
KW - stars: black holes
KW - stars: statistics
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U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/aa97d5
DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/aa97d5
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85035334996
SN - 2041-8205
VL - 850
JO - Astrophysical Journal Letters
JF - Astrophysical Journal Letters
IS - 1
M1 - L13
ER -