Publications
Clicking on any of the links below will redirect you to the abstract and details of my contributions.
Hartman, Z., Lepine, S., and Medan, I.
ApJ, 2022
Over the past decade, the number of known wide-binary systems has expanded exponentially, thanks to the release of data from the Gaia Mission. Some of these wide-binary systems are actually higher-order multiples, where one of the components is an unresolved binary itself. One way to search for these systems is by identifying the overluminous components in the systems. In this study, we examine 4947 K+K wide-binary pairs from the SUPERWIDE catalog, and quantify the relative colors and luminosities of the components to find evidence for additional unresolved companions. The method is best illustrated in a graph that we call the “Lobster” diagram. To confirm that the identified overluminous components are close binary systems, we cross-match our wide binaries with the TESS, K2, and Kepler archives, and search for signs of eclipses and fast stellar rotation modulation in the light curves. We find that 78.9% ± 20.7% of the wide binaries that contain an eclipsing system are identified as overluminous in the “Lobster” diagram, and that 73.5% ± 12.4% of the wide binaries that contain a component showing fast rotation (P < 5 days) also show an overluminous component. From these results, we calculate a revised lower limit on the higher-order multiplicity fraction for K+K wide binaries of 40.0% ± 1.6%. We also examine the higher-order multiplicity fraction as a function of projected physical separation and metallicity. The fraction is unusually constant as a function of projected physical separation, while we see no statistically significant evidence that the fraction varies with metallicity.
van Belle, G.; Schaefer, G.; von Braun, K., Nelan, E., Hartman, Zachary, Boyajian, T., Lopez-Morales, M., Ciardi, D.
PASP, 2020
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) trigonometric parallax observations were obtained to directly determine distances to five nearby M-dwarf/M-dwarf eclipsing binary systems. These systems are intrinsically interesting as benchmark systems for establishing basic physical parameters for low-mass stars, such as luminosity L, and radius R. HST/FGS distances are also one of the few direct checks on Gaia trigonometric parallaxes, given the comparable sensitivity in both magnitude limit and determination of parallactic angles. A spectral energy distribution (SED) fit of each system’s blended flux output was carried out, allowing for estimation of the bolometric flux from the primary and secondary components of each system. From the stellar M, L, and R values, the low-mass star relationships between L and M, and R and M, are compared against idealized expectations for such stars. An examination on the inclusion of these close M-dwarf/M-dwarf pairs in higher-order common proper motion (CPM) pairs is analyzed; each of the 5 systems has indications of being part of a CPM system. Unexpected distances on interesting objects found within the grid of parallactic reference stars are also presented, including a nearby M dwarf and a white dwarf.
Hartman, Z. and Lepine, S.
ApJS, 2020
We present a catalog of 99,203 wide binary systems, initially identified as common proper motion (CPM) pairs from a subset of ∼5.2 million stars with proper motions μ > 40 mas yr-1, selected from Gaia data release 2 (DR2) and the SUPERBLINK high proper motion catalog. CPM pairs are found by searching for pairs of stars with angular separations <1° and proper motion differences ∆μ < 40 mas yr-1. A Bayesian analysis is then applied in two steps. In a first pass, we use proper motion differences and angular separations to distinguish between real binaries and chance alignments. In a second pass, we use parallax data from Gaia DR2 to refine our Bayesian probability estimates. We present a table of 119,390 pairs which went through the full analysis, 99,203 of which have probabilities >95% of being real wide binaries. Of those 99,203 high-probability pairs, we estimate that only about 364 pairs are most likely to be false positives. In addition, we identify 57,506 pairs that have probabilities greater than 10% from the first pass but have high parallax errors and therefore were not vetted in the second pass. We examine the projected physical separation distribution of our highest probability pairs and note that the distribution is a simple exponential tail and shows no evidence of being bimodal. Among pairs with lower probability, wide binaries are detected at larger separations (>104-105 au), consistent with the very wide population suggested in previous studies; however, our analysis suggests that these do not represent a distinct population, but instead represent either the exponential tail of the “normal” wide binary distribution or are simply chance alignments of unrelated field stars. We examine the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of this set of high-probability wide binaries and find evidence for 980 overluminous components among 2227 K + K wide binaries; assuming these represent unresolved subsystems, we determine that the higher-order multiplicity fraction for K + K wide systems is at least 39.6%.
