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arXiv · 1710.04657

Revealing black holes with Gaia

Katelyn Breivik·Sourav Chatterjee·Shane L. Larson
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Abstract

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, 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 5 yr 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.

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Katelyn Breivik, Sourav Chatterjee, Shane L. Larson. 2017-10-12. Revealing black holes with Gaia. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa97d5

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