Wide Post-common Envelope Binaries from Gaia: Orbit Validation and Formation Models
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Astrometry from Gaia DR3 has enabled the discovery of a sample of 3000+ binaries containing white dwarfs (WD) and main-sequence (MS) stars in relatively wide orbits, with orbital periods P orb = (100–1000) days. This population was not predicted by binary population synthesis models before Gaia and—if the Gaia orbits are robust—likely requires very efficient envelope ejection during common envelope evolution (CEE). To assess the reliability of the Gaia solutions, we measured multi-epoch radial velocities (RVs) of 31 WD+MS binary candidates with P orb = (40–300) days and AstroSpectroSB1 orbital solutions. We jointly fit the RVs and astrometry, allowing us to validate the Gaia solutions and tighten constraints on component masses. We find a high success rate for the Gaia solutions, with only 2 out of the 31 systems showing significant discrepancies between their Gaia orbital solutions and our RVs. Joint fitting of RVs and astrometry allows us to directly constrain the secondary-to-primary flux ratio <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi class="MJX-tex-calligraphic" mathvariant="script">S</mml:mi> </mml:math> , and we find <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi class="MJX-tex-calligraphic" mathvariant="script">S</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≲</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.02</mml:mn> </mml:math> for most objects, confirming the companions are indeed WDs. We tighten constraints on the binaries’ eccentricities, finding a median e ≈ 0.1. These eccentricities are much lower than those of normal MS+MS binaries at similar periods, but much higher than predicted for binaries formed via stable mass transfer. We present MESA single and binary evolution models to explore how the binaries may have formed. The orbits of most binaries in the sample can be produced through CEE that begins when the WD progenitor is an AGB star, corresponding to initial separations of 2–5 au. Roughly 50% of all post-common envelope binaries are predicted to have first interacted on the AGB, ending up in wide orbits like these systems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".