On the initial binary population for star cluster simulations

Abstract

Colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) are powerful tools that might be used to infer stellar properties in globular clusters (GCs), for example, the binary fraction and their mass ratio ($q$) distribution. In the past few years, observations have revealed that q distributions of GC main-sequence (MS) binaries are generally flat, and a distribution characterized by a strong increase towards q $\approx$ 1 is not typical in GCs. In numerical simulations of GC evolution with the initial binary population (IBP) described by Kroupa, synthetic CMD colour distributions exhibit a peak associated with binaries that have q $\approx$ 1. While the Kroupa IBP reproduces binary properties in star-forming regions, clusters and the Galactic field, the peak in the q distribution towards q $\approx$ 1 observed for GC simulations is not consistent with distributions derived from observations. The objective of this paper is to refine and further improve the physical formulation of pre-main-sequence eigenevolution proposed by Kroupa in order to achieve CMD colour distributions of simulated GC models similar to those observed in real GCs, and to get a similarly good agreement with binary properties for late-type binaries in the Galactic field. We present in this paper a modified Kroupa IBP, in which early-type stars follow observational distributions, and late-type stars are generated according to slightly modified pre-main-sequence eigenevolution prescriptions. Our modifications not only lead to a qualitatively good agreement with respect to long-term observations of late-type binaries in the Galactic field, but also resolve the above-mentioned problem related to binary distributions in GC models.

18 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables; accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (2)

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