Wide binaries in Tycho-Gaia II: metallicities, abundances and prospects for chemical tagging

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2018-02, Vol.473 (4), p.5393-5406
• Main Authors: Andrews, Jeff J., Chanamé, Julio, Agüeros, Marcel A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abundance; Aluminum; Astrometry; Binary stars; Iron; Marking; Metallicity; Open clusters; Organic chemistry; Parallax; Radial velocity; Silicon; Spectroscopic telescopes; Titanium; White dwarf stars
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx2685

Abstract From our recent catalogue based on the first Gaia data release (TGAS), we select wide binaries in which both stars have been observed by the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) or the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). Using RAVE and LAMOST metallicities and RAVE Mg, Al, Si, Ti and Fe abundances, we find that the differences in the metallicities and elemental abundances of components of wide binaries are consistent with being due to observational uncertainties, in agreement with previous results for smaller and more restricted samples. The metallicity and elemental abundance consistency between wide binary components presented in this work confirms their common origin and bolsters the status of wide binaries as ‘mini-open clusters’. Furthermore, this is evident that wide binaries are effectively co-eval and co-chemical, supporting their use for, e.g. constraining age–activity–rotation relations, the initial–final mass relation for white dwarfs and M-dwarf metallicity indicators. Additionally, we demonstrate that the common proper motion, common parallax pairs in TGAS with the most extreme separations (s ≳ 0.1 pc) typically have inconsistent metallicities, radial velocities or both and are therefore likely to be predominantly comprised of random alignments of unassociated stars with similar astrometry, in agreement with our previous results. Finally, we propose that wide binaries form an ideal data set with which we can test chemical tagging as a method to identify stars of common origin, particularly because the stars in wide binaries span a wide range of metallicities, much wider than that spanned by nearby open clusters.