Hunting Black Holes with Gaia

Abstract

We predict the number of black holes with stellar companions that are potentially detectable with Gaia astrometry over the course of its five-year mission. Our model estimates that nearly 2$\times$10${}^5$ astrometric binaries hosting black holes and stellar companions brighter than Gaia's detection threshold, G $\sim$ 20, should be discovered with 5$\sigma$ sensitivity. Among these detectable binaries, systems with longer orbital periods are favored, and black hole and stellar companion masses in the range M${}_{BH}\sim$ 6-10 M${}_{\odot }$ and M${}_{\ast }\sim$ 1-2 M${}_{\odot }$, respectively, are expected to dominate.

6 pages, 2 figures; to be published in MNRAS

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• PopSyCLE: A New Population Synthesis Code for Compact Object Microlensing Events
• Population Synthesis of Black Hole Binaries with Normal-Star Companions: I. Detached Systems
• Triage of Astrometric Binaries - how to find triple systems and dormant black-hole secondaries in the Gaia orbits
• A Method to Search for Black Hole Candidates with Giant Companions by LAMOST
• X-ray emission from BH+O star binaries expected to descend from the observed galactic WR+O binaries
• Astrometric excess noise in Gaia EDR3 and the search for X-ray binaries
• Mining for Candidates of Galactic Stellar-mass Black Hole Binaries with LAMOST
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• The MAVERIC survey: A catalogue of radio sources in southern globular clusters from the Australia Telescope Compact Array
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• Unveiling the architecture of a pulsar - binary black-hole triple system with pulsar arrival time analysis
• Population Synthesis of Black Hole Binaries with Compact Star Companions
• Observations of red giants with suspected massive companions
• The Hipparcos Pleiades parallax error is also a proper motion error