Revealing black holes with Gaia

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.

Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters; 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; Comments welcome

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• The Gaia mission
• X-ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
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• Gaia Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties
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• Population synthesis of ultracompact X-ray binaries in the Galactic Bulge
• The gravitational-wave signal generated by a galactic population of double neutron-star binaries

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• Triage of the Gaia DR3 astrometric orbits. I. A sample of binaries with probable compact companions
• 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
• On the Neutron Star/Black Hole Mass Gap and Black Hole Searches
• The MAVERIC survey: A catalogue of radio sources in southern globular clusters from the Australia Telescope Compact Array
• On the recurrence times of neutron star X-ray binary transients and the nature of the Galactic Centre quiescent X-ray binaries
• Unveiling the architecture of a pulsar - binary black-hole triple system with pulsar arrival time analysis
• Astrometric mass measurement of compact companions in binary systems with Gaia
• Population Synthesis of Black Hole Binaries with Compact Star Companions
• Stellar-Mass Black Holes