A Robust Measure of Tidal Circularization in Coeval Binary Populations: The Solar-Type Spectroscopic Binary Population in the Open Cluster M35

By S. Meibom, R. Mathieu. 2004

221 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new homogeneous sample of 32 spectroscopic binary orbits in the young (~150 Myr) main-sequence open cluster M35. The distribution of orbital eccentricity versus orbital period (e- log P) displays a distinct transition from eccentric to circular orbits at an orbital period of ~10 days. The transition is due to tidal circularization of the closest binaries. The population of binary orbits in M35 provide a significantly improved constraint on the rate of tidal circularization at an age of 150 Myr. We propose a new and more robust diagnostic of the degree of tidal circularization in a binary population based on a functional fit to the e- log P distribution. We call this new measure the "tidal circularization period." The tidal circularization period of a binary population represents the orbital period at which a binary orbit with the most frequent initial orbital eccentricity circularizes (defined as e = 0.01) at the age of the population. We determine the tidal circularization period for M35, as well as for seven additional binary populations spanning ages from the pre-main sequence (~3 Myr) to the late main sequence (~10 Gyr), and use Monte Carlo error analysis to determine the uncertainties on the derived circularization periods. We conclude that current theories of tidal circularization cannot account for the distribution of tidal circularization periods with population age.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/93292e1748eac94694ac91e4cfa974e60e765552

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. T. Mazeh
2. J. Winn
3. G. Chabrier
4. M. Moe
5. Gordon I. Ogilvie
6. Isabelle Baraffe
7. Jon Fortney
8. J. Leconte

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. T. Mazeh
2. Gordon I. Ogilvie
3. M. Moe
4. D. Lin
5. R. Di Stefano
6. D. Soderblom
7. D. Deming
8. J. Winn

Citations in the corpus

• The Close Binary Fraction of Solar-type Stars Is Strongly Anticorrelated with Metallicity (2018, background): “The population of solar-type binaries in the old, metal-poor halo indeed has a slightly longer circularization period of Pcirc≈15 days (Meibom & Mathieu 2005).”
• STELLAR ROTATION IN M35: MASS–PERIOD RELATIONS, SPIN-DOWN RATES, AND GYROCHRONOLOGY (2008, background): “Also shown is the circular target region of our spectroscopic survey described in Section 2.4 and in Meibom & Mathieu (2005).”
• Compact Object Modeling with the StarTrack Population Synthesis Code (2005, unknown): “Cutoff Period for M67 Open star clusters have often been used to test tidal interaction theories (Mathieu et al. 1992; Meibom & Mathieu 2005).”
• Observational Evidence for Tidal Interaction in Close Binary Systems (2007, methodology): “Meibom et al. (2006) derived the rotation periods of 13 close binaries in M34 and M35, two young open clusters, with an age of 150 and 250 Myrs, respectively.”
• The Ages of Stars (2007, background): “…is that we expect to see a progression with cluster age of the period at which synchronization and circularization are seen and that is largely borne out observationally (Meibom & Mathieu 2005, Meibom, Mathieu & Stassun 2006), although the Hyades and Praesepe appear to conflict with the trend.”
• Tidal Dissipation in Rotating Solar-Type Stars (2007, methodology): “1 reproduces the observational data from the study of Meibom & Mathieu (2005).”
• The Apparently Decaying Orbit of WASP-12b (2017, background): “(15) This value for Q⋆ is smaller than the typical range of 106−7 that has been inferred through ensemble analyses of binary stars and star-planet systems (see, e.g. Meibom & Mathieu 2005; Hansen 2010; Penev et al. 2012).”
• Is tidal heating sufficient to explain bloated exoplanets? Consistent calculations accounting for finite initial eccentricity (2010, background): “For example, Q′? values inferred from the circularization of close FGK binary stars (Meibom & Mathieu 2005), may be lower than the actual Q′? encountered in star-planet systems (Ogilvie & Lin 2007).”
• Mind Your Ps and Qs: The Interrelation between Period (P) and Mass-ratio (Q) Distributions of Binary Stars (2016, methodology): “8 in Meibom & Mathieu (2005), and the 61 binaries with ages τ ≈ 3 - 10 Gyr contained in panels e - h on the right side of their Fig.”