The Close Binary Fraction of Solar-type Stars is Strongly Anti-correlated with Metallicity

Abstract

There is now strong evidence that the close binary fraction (P < 10${}^4$ days; a < 10 AU) of solar-type stars ($M_1$ = 0.6-1.5M${}_{\odot }$) decreases significantly with metallicity. Although early surveys showed that the observed spectroscopic binary (SB) fractions in the galactic disk and halo are similar (e.g., Carney-Latham sample), these studies did not correct for incompleteness. In this study, we examine five different surveys and thoroughly account for their underlying selection biases to measure the intrinsic occurrence rate of close solar-type binaries. We re-analyze: (1) a volume-limited sample of solar-type stars, (2) an SB survey of high-proper-motion stars, (3) various SB samples of metal-poor giants, (4) the APOGEE survey of radial velocity (RV) variables, and (5) Kepler eclipsing binaries (EBs). The observed APOGEE RV variability fraction and Kepler EB fraction both decrease by a factor of $\approx$4 across $-$1.0 < [Fe/H] < 0.5 at the 22$\sigma$ and 9$\sigma$ confidence levels, respectively. After correcting for incompleteness, all five samples exhibit a quantitatively consistent anti-correlation between the intrinsic close binary fraction (a < 10 AU) and metallicity: $F_{\mathrm{close}}$ = 53%$\pm$12%, 40%$\pm$6%, 24%$\pm$4%, and 10%$\pm$3% at [Fe/H] = $-$3.0, $-$1.0, $-$0.2 (mean field metallicity), and +0.5, respectively. We present fragmentation models that explain why the close binary fraction of solar-type stars strongly decreases with metallicity while the wide binary fraction, close binary fraction of OB stars, and initial mass function are all constant across $-$1.5 < [Fe/H] < 0.5. The majority of solar-type stars with [Fe/H] < $-$1.0 will interact with a stellar companion, which has profound implications for binary evolution in old and metal-poor environments such as the galactic halo, bulge, thick disk, globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, and high-redshift universe.

Submitted to ApJ, 31 pages, 20 figures

References in corpus (50)

• Binary interaction dominates the evolution of massive stars
• The Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database
• Southern Massive Stars at High Angular Resolution: Observational Campaign and Companion Detection
• Forming Disk Galaxies in Lambda CDM Simulations
• Tertiary companions to close spectroscopic binaries
• ALMA Survey of Lupus Protoplanetary Disks II: Gas Disk Radii
• The California-Kepler Survey. IV. Metal-rich Stars Host a Greater Diversity of Planets
• On the diversity and statistical properties of protostellar discs
• Revised Radii of Kepler Stars and Planets Using Gaia Data Release 2
• The Importance of Radiative Feedback for the Stellar Initial Mass Function
• Toward Complete Statistics of Massive Binary Stars: Penultimate Results from the Cygnus OB2 Radial Velocity Survey
• A Triple Protostar System Formed via Fragmentation of a Gravitationally Unstable Disk
• Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius
• Global Models for the Evolution of Embedded, Accreting Protostellar Disks
• Fragmentation of Massive Protostellar Disks
• The age-metallicity structure of the Milky Way disk
• The impact of companions on stellar evolution
• The Tarantula Massive Binary Monitoring: I. Observational campaign and OB-type spectroscopic binaries
• Stellar Multiplicity Meets Stellar Evolution And Metallicity: The APOGEE View
• Do most planetary nebulae derive from binaries? I Population synthesis model of the galactic planetary nebula population produced by singlestars and binaries
• Activity indicators and stellar parameters of the Kepler targets. An application of the ROTFIT pipeline to LAMOST-Kepler stellar spectra
• Discovery and Characterization of 3000+ Main-Sequence Binaries from APOGEE Spectra
• Multiple protostellar systems. II. A high resolution near-infrared imaging survey in nearby star-forming regions
• The statistical properties of stars and their dependence on metallicity: the effects of opacity
• Finding binaries from phase modulation of pulsating stars with Kepler: V. Orbital parameters, with eccentricity and mass-ratio distributions of 341 new binaries
• The Evolution of the Multiplicity of Embedded Protostars II: Binary Separation Distribution & Analysis
• Elemental Abundances in Milky Way-like Galaxies from a Hierarchical Galaxy Formation Model
• A Super-Solar Metallicity For Stars With Hot Rocky Exoplanets
• Population Studies. XIII. A New Analysis of the Bidelman-MacConnell "Weak-Metal" Stars - Confirmation of Metal-Poor Stars in the Thick Disk of the Galaxy
• Molecular Line Emission from Massive Protostellar Disks: Predictions for ALMA and the EVLA
• Precise radial velocities of giant stars. IV. A correlation between surface gravity and radial velocity variation and a statistical investigation of companion properties
• The wide binary fraction of solar-type stars: emergence of metallicity dependence at a < 200 AU
• Metallicity-Dependent Signatures in the Kepler Planets
• The binarity of Milky Way F,G,K stars as a function of effective temperature and metallicity
• The Complete Initial Mass Function Down to the Sub-Solar Regime in the Large Magellanic Cloud with Hubble Space Telescope ACS Observations
• Stellar loci II. a model-free estimate of the binary fraction for field FGK stars
• Binary Formation in Star-Forming Clouds with Various Metallicities
• Metallicity and the Universality of the IMF
• The Bulge Metallicity Distribution from the APOGEE Survey
• The mass-ratio and eccentricity distributions of barium and S stars, and red giants in open clusters
• Is stellar multiplicity universal? Tight stellar binaries in the Orion Nebula Cluster
• LAMOST observations in the Kepler field. Analysis of the stellar parameters measured with the LASP based on the low-resolution spectra
• Binary Properties from Cepheid Radial Velocities (CRaV)
• Cool Subdwarf Investigations II: Multiplicity
• The Metallicity of Stars with Close Companions
• The Progenitors and Lifetimes of Planetary Nebula
• Binary Star Fractions from the LAMOST DR4
• Statistical Time-Resolved Spectroscopy: A higher fraction of short-period binaries for metal-rich F-type dwarfs in SDSS
• Multiplicity of the Galactic Senior Citizens: A high-resolution search for cool subdwarf companions
• High-Resolution Spectroscopy of Extremely Metal-Poor Stars from SDSS/SEGUE: II. Binary Fraction

Cited by in corpus (153)

• The GALAH+ Survey: Third Data Release
• The Faintest Dwarf Galaxies
• Unresolved stellar companions with Gaia DR2 astrometry
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars
• What is a globular cluster? An observational perspective
• Exoplanet Statistics and Theoretical Implications
• Age dissection of the Milky Way discs: red giants in the Kepler field
• Formation of close binaries by disc fragmentation and migration, and its statistical modeling
• New Type Ia supernova Yields and the Manganese and Nickel Problems in the Milky Way and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• Impact of Binary Stars on Planet Statistics -- I. Planet Occurrence Rates, Trends with Stellar Mass, and Wide Companions to Hot Jupiter Hosts
• Close Binary Companions to APOGEE DR16 Stars: 20,000 Binary-star Systems Across the Color-Magnitude Diagram
• Discovery of an equal-mass "twin" binary population reaching 1000+ AU separations
• Close companions around young stars
• Binary Population Synthesis
• New Insights into the Evolution of Massive Stars and Their Effects on Our Understanding of Early Galaxies
• Why binary interaction does not necessarily dominate the formation of Wolf-Rayet stars at low metallicity
• A non-interacting Galactic black hole candidate in a binary system with a main-sequence star
• Selecting accreted populations: metallicity, elemental abundances, and ages of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus and Sequoia populations
• Observationally driven Galactic double white dwarf population for LISA
• Heavy metal rules. I. Exoplanet incidence and metallicity
• The i-process yields of rapidly-accreting white dwarfs from multicycle He-shell flash stellar evolution models with mixing parameterizations from 3D hydrodynamics simulations
• The wide binary fraction of solar-type stars: emergence of metallicity dependence at a < 200 AU
• Stellar Initial Mass Function Varies with Metallicities and Time
• Birds of a Feather? Magellan/IMACS Spectroscopy of the Ultra-Faint Satellites Grus II, Tucana IV, and Tucana V
• Populations of double white dwarfs in Milky Way satellites and their detectability with LISA
• On the formation of GW190814
• Gaia Data Release 2 Catalogue of Extremely-low Mass White Dwarf Candidates
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars IX: The Spectroscopic Properties of Galactic Variable Stars
• Alone but not lonely: Observational evidence that binary interaction is always required to form hot subdwarf stars
• The Close Binary Fraction as a Function of Stellar Parameters in APOGEE: A Strong Anti-Correlation With $\alpha$ Abundances
• The Nickel Mass Distribution of Stripped-Envelope Supernovae: Implications for Additional Power Sources
• Stellar ages, masses, extinctions and orbital parameters based on spectroscopic parameters of Gaia DR3
• Characterizing Undetected Stellar Companions with Combined Datasets
• Type Ia Supernova Sub-classes and Progenitor Origin
• Observed binary populations reflect the Galactic history. Explaining the orbital period-mass ratio relation in wide hot subdwarf binaries
• Compact Binary Coalescences: Astrophysical Processes and Lessons Learned
• Gaia Data Release 3: Properties of the line broadening parameter derived with the Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS)
• The Spectroscopic Binaries from LAMOST Medium-Resolution Survey (MRS). I. Searching for Double-lined Spectroscopic Binaries (SB2s) with Convolutional Neural Network
• The Progenitors of Calcium-Strong Transients
• Overview of the LAMOST-$Kepler$ project
• 15000 Ellipsoidal Binary Candidates in TESS: Orbital Periods, Binary Fraction, and Tertiary Companions
• The multiplicity fraction in 202 open clusters from Gaia
• Lifetime of short-period binaries measured from their Galactic kinematics
• RR Lyrae From Binary Evolution: Abundant, Young and Metal-Rich
• Open Cluster Chemical Homogeneity Throughout the Milky Way
• Gravitational Waves from Double White Dwarfs as probes of the Milky Way
• Origin of the CEMP-no Group Morphology in the Milky Way
• Great Balls of FIRE II: The evolution and destruction of star clusters across cosmic time in a Milky Way-mass galaxy
• The non-monotonic, strong metallicity dependence of the wide-binary fraction
• Binarity at LOw Metallicity (BLOeM): a spectroscopic VLT monitoring survey of massive stars in the SMC
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars IV: Periodic Variables in the APOGEE Survey
• Evidence for sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia supernovae from the last major merger
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: detection and characterization of single line spectroscopic binaries
• Planetary Architectures in Interacting Stellar Environments
• The Solar Neighborhood XLIX: New Discoveries and Orbits of M Dwarf Multiples with Speckle Interferometry at SOAR
• Effects of the environment on the multiplicity properties of stars in the STARFORGE simulations
• The Red Supergiant Binary Fraction as a Function of Metallicity in M31 and M33
• Exploring metallicity-dependent rates of Type Ia supernovae and their impact on galaxy formation
• Four-hundred Very Metal-poor Stars studied with LAMOST and Subaru. I. Survey Design, Follow-up Program, and Binary Frequency
• Spectroscopic orbits of nearby stars
• Giant planets and brown dwarfs on wide orbits: a code comparison project
• Evaluating the impact of binary parameter uncertainty on stellar population properties
• Very wide companion fraction from Gaia DR2: a weak or no enhancement for hot jupiter hosts, and a strong enhancement for contact binaries
• Supernova Rates and Luminosity Functions from ASAS-SN I: 2014--2017 Type Ia SNe and Their Subtypes
• A Rotation Rate for the Planetary-Mass Companion DH Tau b
• Smoking Gun of the Dynamical Processing of the Solar-type Field Binary Stars
• A high fraction of close massive binary stars at low metallicity
• Black hole-neutron star mergers from triples II: the role of metallicity and spin-orbit misalignment
• Shell helium-burning hot subdwarf B stars as candidates for blue large-amplitude pulsators
• Binary companions triggering fragmentation in self-gravitating discs
• The delay time distribution of supernovae from integral-field spectroscopy of nearby galaxies
• Comparison of Gaia and Hipparcos parallaxes of close visual binary stars and the impact on determinations of their masses
• The White Dwarf Binary Pathways Survey -- IX. Three long period white dwarf plus subgiant binaries
• Bayesian Characterization of Main Sequence Binaries in the Old Open Cluster NGC 188
• Applying the metallicity-dependent binary fraction to double white dwarf formation: Implications for LISA
• Binary fractions of G and K dwarf stars based on the Gaia EDR3 and LAMOST DR5: impacts of the chemical abundances
• Disk Evolution Study Through Imaging of Nearby Young Stars (DESTINYS): A close low mass companion to ET Cha
• Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are Insensitive to Stellar Metallicity
• Constraining the initial planetary population in the gravitational instability model
• A Tale of Two Circularization Periods
• On the impact of spectral template uncertainties in synthetic stellar populations
• PEXO: a global modeling framework for nanosecond timing, microsecond astrometry, and $\mu$m/s radial velocities
• The Large Magellanic Cloud Revealed in Gravitational Waves with LISA
• The statistical properties of stars at redshift, z=5, compared with the present epoch
• White dwarf binaries Across the H-R Diagram
• Continuous Gravitational Waves: A New Window to Look for Heavy Non-annihilating Dark Matter
• Enhancement of Double-Close-Binary Quadruples
• Galactic Chemical Evolution Models Favor an Extended Type Ia Supernova Delay-Time Distribution
• Stellar kinematics of dwarf galaxies from multi-epoch spectroscopy: application to Triangulum II
• Binary Fraction Indicators in Resolved Stellar Populations and Supernova Type Ratios
• High-speed stars. II. An unbound star, young stars, bulge metal-poor stars, and Aurora candidates
• Cosmic Type Ia SN rate and constraints on SN Ia progenitors
• Rotation of Kepler field dwarfs and sub giants: Spectroscopic $v\sin I$ from APOGEE
• Binarity at LOw Metallicity (BLOeM): Enhanced multiplicity of early B-type dwarfs and giants at $Z=0.2{\mathrm{Z}}_{\odot }$
• Most Stars (and Planets?) Are Born in Intense Radiation Fields
• Protostellar-disc fragmentation across all metallicities
• A Statistical Detection of Wide Binary Systems in the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II
• The statistical properties of protostellar discs and their dependence on metallicity
• The RR Lyrae Delay-Time Distribution: A Novel Perspective on Models of Old Stellar Populations
• Binary star population of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy
• Variation of the low-mass end of the stellar initial mass function with redshift and metallicity
• The Rich Lack Close Neighbours: The Dependence of Blue-Straggler Fraction on Metallicity
• Are Lithium-Rich Giants Binaries? A Radial Velocity Variability Analysis of 1,400 Giants
• Connecting the local stellar halo and its dark matter density to dwarf galaxies via blue stragglers
• Wide binaries from the H3 survey: the thick disk and halo have similar wide binary fractions
• An extremely hot white dwarf with a rapidly rotating K-type subgiant companion: UCAC2 46706450
• Lithium in Kepler Red Giants: Defining Normal and Anomalous
• Impact of a companion and of chromospheric emission on the shape of chromosome maps for globular clusters
• Internal calibration of LAMOST and Gaia DR3 GSP-Spec stellar abundances
• Mass-stream trajectories with non-synchronously rotating donors
• Wide companions to M and L subdwarfs with Gaia and the Virtual Observatory
• Binarity at LOw Metallicity (BLOeM): Multiplicity of early B-type supergiants in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Monte Carlo simulations of multiple populations in globular clusters: constraints on the initial size of the second generation from binary stars
• Applications of Stellar Population Synthesis in the Distant Universe
• On the Anti-Correlation between Duration and Redshift in Gamma-ray Bursts
• Constraints on asteroid-mass primordial black holes in dwarf galaxies using Hubble Space Telescope photometry
• Photometric Determination of Main-Sequence Binaries with Gaia
• Recovering Injected Astrophysics from the LISA Galactic Double White Dwarf Binaries
• Vetting the Lobster Diagram: Searching for Unseen Companions in Wide Binaries using NASA Space Exoplanet Missions
• Dynamical masses across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
• Compact object populations over cosmic time II. Compact object merger rates and masses over redshift from varying initial conditions
• Not that simple: the metallicity dependence of the wide binary fraction changes with separation and stellar mass
• The Low-Mass Stellar Initial Mass Function in Nearby Ultrafaint Dwarf Galaxies
• Circumstellar CO J = 3-2 detected around the evolving metal-poor ([Fe/H] ~ -1.15 dex) AGB star RU Vulpeculae
• The GALAH survey: Multiple stars and our Galaxy. I. A comprehensive method for deriving properties of FGK binary stars
• The binary fraction of Blue Horizontal-Branch (BHB) Stars
• Exploring the Stellar Rotation of Early-type Stars in the LAMOST Medium-resolution Survey. III. Evolution
• Stellar Migration and Chemical Enrichment in the Milky Way Disc: A Hybrid Model
• Pairing function of visual binary stars
• Fewer Companions in the Crowd: The Low Close Binary Fraction in Globular Clusters from Gaia RVS
• First Star Survivors as Metal-Rich Halo Stars that Experienced Supernova Explosions in Binary Systems
• Where are the binaries? -- Searching for blue horizontal-branch stars in binary systems in the inner Galactic Halo
• LAMOST medium-resolution spectroscopic survey of binarity and exotic star (LAMOST-MRS-B): Observation strategy and target selection
• Millions of Main-Sequence Binary Stars from Gaia BP/RP Spectra
• Multiplicity Statistics of Stars in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy: Comparison to the Milky Way
• Asteroseismically Inferred Ages of 132,000 Red Giants with TESS
• Stellar masses and mass ratios for Gaia open cluster members
• Population Synthesis of Gravitational Wave Sources
• Compact object populations over cosmic time I. BOSSA: a Binary Object environment-Sensitive Sampling Algorithm
• The long-term evolution of Ultra Faint Dwarf Galaxies and observational implications
• Ancient, eclipsing, tidally-locked: A blue lurker progenitor in the population of extreme-velocity star candidates
• Double-lined spectroscopic binaries in the APOGEE DR16 and DR17 data
• The influence of tight binaries on proto-planetary disk masses
• Testing Evolutionary Models with Red Supergiant and Wolf-Rayet Populations
• Interpreting Galaxy Properties with Improved Modelling
• Stellar Multiplicity in Open Clusters: Investigating Binary Fractions and Their Relationship with Cluster Properties
• Estimating Transient Rates from Cosmological Simulations and BPASS
• The eccentricity distribution of wide binaries and their individual measurements
• Stellar multiplicity and stellar rotation: Insights from APOGEE
• A Quadruple Excess in Wide Binary Systems: Evidence for Correlated Binary Formation
• Formation of massive multiple-star systems: early migration and mergers
• Stellar multiplicity: an interdisciplinary nexus
• The Progenitor Systems of Classical Novae in M31