We review the results of our analysis of the OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries
(Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006), using EBAS -- Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver,
an automated algorithm to fit lightcurves of eclipsing binaries (Tamuz, Mazeh &
North 2006).
  After being corrected for observational selection effects, the set of
detected eclipsing binaries yielded the period distribution and the frequency
of all LMC short-period binaries, and not just the eclipsing systems.
  Somewhat surprisingly, the period distribution is consistent with a flat
distribution in log P between 2 and 10 days. The total number of binaries with
periods shorter than 10 days in the LMC was estimated to be about 5000. This
figure led us to suggest that (0.7 +- 0.4)% of the main-sequence A- and B-type
stars are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days. This frequency
is substantially smaller than the fraction of binaries found by small Galactic
radial-velocity surveys of B stars.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Conference Proceedings of IAU Symp.
  24

Duquennoy

Garcia

Halbwachs

Kaluzny

Omer Tamuz

Pierre North

Raboud

Tsevi Mazeh

Udalski

Wyrzykowski

Zebrun

English

arXiv

We review the results of our analysis of the OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries (Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006), using EBAS -- Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver, an automated algorithm to fit lightcurves of eclipsing binaries (Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006). 

After being corrected for observational selection effects, the set of detected eclipsing binaries yielded the period distribution and the frequency of all LMC short-period binaries, and not just the eclipsing systems. 

Somewhat surprisingly, the period distribution is consistent with a flat distribution in log P between 2 and 10 days. The total number of binaries with periods shorter than 10 days in the LMC was estimated to be about 5000. This figure led us to suggest that (0.7 ± 0.4)% of the main-sequence A- and B-type stars are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days. This frequency is substantially smaller than the fraction of binaries found by small Galactic radial-velocity surveys of B stars

Mazeh, Tsevi

Tamuz, Omer

North, Pierre

Caltech Authors - Main

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Proceedings Title IAU Symposium
Proceedings IAU Symposium No. IAUS240, 2006
W. Hartkopf, E. Guinan & P. Harmanec, eds.
c© 2006 International Astronomical Union
DOI: 00.0000/X000000000000000X
Analysis of the eclipsing binaries in the LMC
discovered by OGLE: Period distribution
and frequency of the short-period binaries
Tsevi Mazeh1, Omer Tamuz1 and Pierre North2
1School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences,
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
email: mazeh@wise.tau.ac.il
2 Laboratoire d’Astrophysique, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL),
Observatoire, CH-1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
Abstract.
We review the results of our analysis of the OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries (Mazeh, Tamuz &
North 2006), using EBAS — Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver, an automated algorithm to
fit lightcurves of eclipsing binaries (Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006).
After being corrected for observational selection effects, the set of detected eclipsing binaries
yielded the period distribution and the frequency of all LMC short-period binaries, and not just
the eclipsing systems.
Somewhat surprisingly, the period distribution is consistent with a flat distribution in log P
between 2 and 10 days. The total number of binaries with periods shorter than 10 days in the
LMC was estimated to be about 5000. This figure led us to suggest that (0.7 ± 0.4)% of the
main-sequence A- and B-type stars are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days.
This frequency is substantially smaller than the fraction of binaries found by small Galactic
radial-velocity surveys of B stars.
Keywords. methods: data analysis, binaries: eclipsing, Magellanic Clouds
1. Introduction
The OGLE project yielded a huge photometric dataset of the LMC (Udalski et al.
2000), which includes a few thousand eclipsing binary lightcurves (Wyrzykowski et al.
2003). This dataset allows for the first time a statistical analysis of the population of
short-period binaries of an entire galaxy.
To analyse this set of lightcurves we constructed EBAS (Eclipsing Binary Auto-
mated Solver), an automated algorithm (Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006) to fit eclipsing
lightcurves. Having solved the lightcurves with EBAS, we proceeded to derive the sta-
tistical features of the eclipsing binaries of the LMC (Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006). In
this short paper we present the EBAS algorithm and show two results of interest: a flat
log-period distribution and a lower-than-expected binary frequency of the short-period
early-type binaries.
2. The EBAS Algorithm
EBAS is based on the EBOP code (Popper & Etzel 1981, Etzel 1981), which consists
of two main components. The first component generates a lightcurve for a given set of
orbital elements and stellar parameters, while the second finds the parameters that best
fit the observational data. We only used the lightcurve generator, and wrote our own
code to search for the best-fit set of elements that minimize the χ2 statistic.
1
2 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
The search for the global χ2 minimum is performed in two stages. We first find a good
initial guess, and then use a simulated annealing algorithm to find the global minimum.
While the first stage is merely aimed at finding an initial guess for the next stage, in most
cases it already converges to a very good solution. A full description of the algorithm is
given in Tamuz, Mazeh & North (2006).
During the development of EBAS we found that some solutions with low χ2 might be
unsatisfactory. While, for such solutions, the value of χ2 is reasonable, a visual inspection
of the residuals, plotted as a function of phase, revealed that the fit is sub-optimal. For
such cases, human interaction was needed to improve the fit, or to otherwise decree the
solution unsatisfactory. In order to allow an automated approach, an automatic algorithm
must replace human evaluation.
We therefore defined a new estimator which is sensitive to the correlation between
adjacent residuals of the measurements relative to the model. This feature is in contrast
to the behaviour of the χ2 function, which measures the sum of the squares of the
residuals, but is not sensitive to the signs of the different residuals and their order.
Denoting by ki the number of residuals in the i-th run (a series of consecutive residuals
with the same sign), we defined the ’alarm’ A as:
A =
1
χ2
M
∑
i=1
(
ri,1
σi,1
+
ri,2
σi,2
+ · · · +
ri,ki
σi,ki
)2
− (1 +
4
π
) , (2.1)
where ri,j is the residual of the j-th measurement of the i-th run and σi,j is its uncertainty.
The sum is over all the measurements in a run and then over the M runs. Dividing by
χ2 assures that, in contrast to χ2 itself, A is not sensitive to a systematic overestimation
or underestimation of the uncertainties. It is easy to see that A is minimal when the
residuals alternate between positive and negative values, and that long runs with large
residuals increase its value.
When a solution found by EBAS showed high A, EBAS automatically classified the
solution as unsatisfactory and started a modified search of the parameter space in order
to find a better solution. Systems for which a low enough A solution could not be found
were marked as such. Visual inspection of these lightcurves and their fitted models showed
that most of them are close contact systems which EBOP did not model well.
3. Analysis of the OGLE LMC Eclipsing Binaries
The LMC OGLE-II photometric campaign (Udalski et al. 2000) was carried out from
1997 to 2000, during which between 260 and 512 measurements in the I band were taken
for 21 fields (Zebrun et al. 2001). Wyrzykowski et al. (2003) searched the photometric
data base and identified 2580 binaries. We analysed those systems with EBAS and found
1931 acceptable solutions. We excluded all binaries with sum of radii larger than 0.6 of
the binary separation. Furthermore, we excluded also binaries with high A values, which
indicated that they are probably contact systems that EBOP can not model properly
(see Mazeh, Tamuz & North (2006) for details).
The very large sample of 1931 short-period binaries enables us to derive some statisti-
cal features of the population of short-period binaries in the LMC. However, the sample
suffers from serious observational selection effects, which affected the discovery of the
eclipsing binaries. To be able to correct for the selection effects we needed a well-defined
homogeneous sample. We therefore trimmed the sample before deriving the period dis-
tribution. Our trimmed sample consisted of all systems of magnitude between 17 and
19 in the I band with periods shorter than 10 days and having main-sequence color
Period distribution and frequency of short-period binaries in the LMC 3
−0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
V−I
I
Figure 1. The I-magnitude as a function of the averaged V − I colour of all eclipsing binaries
of the sample. Only binaries that appear inside the trapezoid were included in the trimmed
sample.
(see Fig 1). In this way we chose only systems with A and B main-sequence primaries.
See Mazeh, Tamuz & North (2006) for a full description of the trimmed sample.
3.1. The period distribution
In order to explore the period distribution of the LMC short-period binaries, and not
just the eclipsing binaries, we needed to correct for the selection effects which affect the
likelihood of a binary system to be eclipsing, and to be detected by the OGLE survey. We
did this by calculating for each eclipsing binary in the trimmed sample a weight w, which
was the reciprocal of the probability of being detected as an eclipsing binary, assuming
random orientation and phase (see Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006). When calculating the
period distribution of the binary population we then considered that eclipsing binary as
w systems.
We plotted in Fig 2 two period histograms of the trimmed sample, before and after the
correction for the observational effects was applied. We emphasize that if the correction
was applied properly, the right panel represents the period distribution of all binaries in
the LMC with I-magnitude between 17 and 19, and with sum of radii smaller than 0.6,
and not only the eclipsing binaries.
The corrected period histogram shows clearly a distribution that rises up to about
log P = 0.3, and then flattens off, suggesting that the period distribution of the short-
period binaries with early-type binaries is consistent with a flat log distribution between
2 and 10 days.
3.2. The frequency of the short-period binaries
As stated above, the corrections applied by Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006 allowed us
to study the distributions of all short-period binaries, up to 10 days, and not only the
eclipsing binaries. We wished to take advantage of this feature of our analysis and esti-
mate, within the limits of the sample, the total number of binaries in the LMC and their
fractional frequency.
4 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
0 0.5 1
0
20
40
60
80
100
Log P (days)
0 0.5 1
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Log P (days)
Figure 2. The period distribution of the binaries in the LMC. The left panel shows the period
histogram of the trimmed sample, while the right one shows the corrected histogram
The sum of weights of the 938 binaries in the trimmed sample was 4585. This means
that to our best estimate there are 4585 short-period binaries in the LMC that fulfill
the constraints we had on the trimmed sample. To get the total number of binaries with
periods shorter than 10 days we had to add the high-alarm binaries and the ones with
large radii; since the added systems are close binaries, their detection probability reaches
almost unity so we did not correct for undetected binaries in their case. When we added
those we ended up with 5004 binaries.
We therefore suggested that the number of binaries in the LMC, with period shorter
than 10 days, with I between 17 and 19, and for which the V − I colour of the system
indicates a main-sequence primary, is about 5000. Assuming Wyrzykowski et al. (2003)
might not have detected all the eclipsing binaries in the dataset and classified them as
such, we arbitrarily assigned an error of 30% to the number of binaries in the sample.
In order to estimate the fractional frequency of A- and B-type main-sequence stars
which reside in binaries that could have been detected by OGLE we had to estimate how
many main-sequence single stars were found by OGLE in the same range of magnitudes
and colours. To do that, we applied exactly the same trimming procedure we performed
above to the whole OGLE dataset of LMC stars and found 332,297 main-sequence stars in
the I-range of 17–19. However, the luminosity of a binary is brighter than the luminosity
of its primary by a magnitude that depends on the light ratio of the two stars of the
system. Therefore, we considered stellar range of I = 17.5 - 19.5, and found 705,535
stars. We therefore adopted 700,000 as a representative number of single stars in the
LMC similar to the population of our binary sample. We arbitrarily assign an error of
50% to this figure.
We therefore concluded that (0.7± 0.4)% of the main-sequence A- and B-type stars in
the LMC are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days.
Period distribution and frequency of short-period binaries in the LMC 5
4. Discussion
4.1. The period distribution
The log flat period distribution derived here is probably not consistent with the period
distribution of Duquennoy & Mayor (1991), who adopted a Gaussian with log P = 4.8
and σ = 2.3, P being measured in days. Their distribution would provide within the
same log P interval almost twice as many systems at log P = 1.0 than at log P = 0.3
(more precisely, the factor would be 1.7), while the new derived distribution is probably
flat.
It is interesting to note that Heacox (1998) reanalysed the data of Duquennoy & Mayor (1991)
and claimed that f(a), the distribution of the G-dwarf orbital semi-major axis, a, is
f(a) ∝ a−1da, which implies a flat log orbital separation distribution. This is equivalent
to the present probable result, although the latter refers to LMC binaries with A- and
B-type primaries, and is limited only to a very small range of orbital separation.
The flat log-period distribution implies a flat log orbital-separation distribution for a
given total binary mass. Such a distribution indicates that there is no preferred length
scale for the formation of short-period binaries (Heacox 1998), at least in the range
between 0.05 and 0.16 AU, for a total binary mass of 5 M⊙. Alternatively, the results
indicate that the specific angular momentum distribution is flat on a log scale at the 1019
cm2s−1 range.
4.2. The binary fraction
The fractional frequency found here is surprisingly small — (0.7 ± 0.4)%. It would be
interesting to compare the frequency of B-star binaries found here for the LMC with
a similar frequency study of B stars in our Galaxy. However, such a large systematic
study of eclipsing binaries is not available. Instead, a few radial-velocity and photometric
searches for binaries in relatively small Galactic samples were performed. Wolff (1978)
studied the frequency of binaries in sharp-lined B7–B9 stars. Her Table 1 presents 73
such stars with V sin i < 100 kms−1, among which 17 are members of binary systems
with Porb < 10 days. Her sample yields a percentage of 23%, one and a half orders of
magnitude larger than what we found in the LMC.
Similar and even higher values of binary frequency were derived for B stars in Galactic
clusters and associations. Morrell & Levato (1991) have determined the rate of binaries
among B stars in the Orion OB1 association, and obtained an overall frequency of binaries
with Porb < 10 days of 26 ± 6%. Garcia & Mermilliod (2001) found a rate of binaries as
high as 82% among stars hotter than B1.5 in the very young open cluster NGC 6231,
though in a sample of 34 stars only. Most orbits have periods shorter than 10 days.
Raboud (1996) estimated a rate of binaries of at least 52% for 36 B1-B9 stars in the
same cluster.
These studies show that binaries hosting B-type stars tend to be more frequent in
young Galactic clusters than in the field. However, even though our LMC binaries are
representative of the LMC field rather than of LMC clusters, the frequency we derived
appears much lower than that of the binaries in the Galactic field.
A few photometric studies were devoted to the search of eclipsing binaries in Galactic
globular clusters (e.g., Yan & Reid 1996, Kaluzny 1997). One such study was the HST
8.3-day observations of 47 Tuc (Albrow et al. 2001), which monitored 46,422 stars and
discovered 5 eclipsing binaries with periods longer than about 4 days. From their con-
clusion we derive (2 ± 1)% for periods between 2 and 10 days. This value, derived for
late-type stars, is much smaller than the frequency derived by the radial-velocity surveys
of B stars, and is close to the (0.7 ± 0.4)% frequency we derived for the LMC.
6 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
We conclude, therefore, that the frequency of binaries we found in the LMC is substan-
tially smaller than the frequency found by Galactic radial-velocity surveys. The detected
frequency of B-type binaries is larger by a factor of 30 or more than the frequency we
found, while the binary frequency of K- and G-type stars is probably larger by a factor
of four (Halbwachs et al. (2003) found 2.7 ± 0.8 per cent binaries with P < 10 days in
the solar neighbourhood). On the other hand, the binary frequency found by photomet-
ric searches in 47 Tuc is only slightly higher and still consistent with the frequency we
deduced for the LMC. It seems that the frequency derived from photometric searches is
consistently smaller than the one found by radial-velocity observations. We are not aware
of any observational effect that could cause such a large difference between the radial
velocity and the photometric studies. Therefore, we suggest that the large difference in
the binary frequencies is probably real and remains a mystery. Obviously, it would be ex-
tremely useful and interesting to have studies of eclipsing binaries similar to the present
one in our Galaxy, as well as in other nearby galaxies.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the OGLE team, and to L. Wyrzykowski in particular, for the
photometric data set and for the eclipsing binary analysis. This work was supported by
the Israeli Science Foundation through grant no. 03/233.
References
Albrow, M. D., Gilliland, R. L., Brown, T. M., Edmonds, P. D., Guhathakurta, P., and Saraje-
dini, A. 2001, ApJ 559, 1060
Duquennoy, A. and Mayor, M. 1991, A&A 248, 485
Etzel, P. B. 1981, in Photometric and Spectroscopic Binary Systems, p. 111-120
Garcia, B. and Mermilliod, J.-C. 2001, A&A 368, 122
Halbwachs, J. L., Mayor, M., Udry, S., Arenou, F. 2003, A&A 397, 159
Heacox, W. D. 1998, AJ 115, 325
Kaluzny, J., Krzeminski, W., Mazur, B., Wysocka, A., and Stepien, K. 1997, Acta Astronomica
47, 249
Mazeh, T., Tamuz, O., and North, P. 2006, MNRAS 367, 1531
Morrell, N. and Levato, H. 1991, ApJS 75, 965
Popper, D. M. and Etzel, P. B. 1981, AJ 86, 102
Raboud, D. 1996, A&A 315, 384
Tamuz, O., Mazeh, T., and North, P. 2006, MNRAS 367, 1521
Udalski, A., Szymanski, M., Kubiak, M., Pietrzynski, G., Soszynski, I.,Wozniak, P., and Zebrun
K. 2000, Acta Astronomica 50, 307
Wolff ,S. C. 1978, ApJ 222, 556
Wyrzykowski, L., Udalski, A., Kubiak, M., Szymanski, M., Zebrun, K., Soszynski, I., Wozniak,
P. R., Pietrzynski, G., and Szewczyk, O. 2003, Acta Astronomica 53, 1
Yan, L. and Reid, I. N. 1996, MNRAS 279, 751
Zebrun, K., Soszynski, I., Wozniak, P. R., Udalski, A., Kubiak, M., Szymanski, M., Pietrzynski,
G., Szewczyk, O., and Wyrzykowski, L. 2001, Acta Astronomica 51, 317


Analysis of the eclipsing binaries in the LMC discovered by OGLE:  period distribution and frequency of the short-period binaries

Infoscience - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Analysis of the Eclipsing Binaries in the LMC Discovered by OGLE: Period Distribution and Frequency of the Short–Period Binaries

Crossref

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Proceedings Title IAU Symposium
Proceedings IAU Symposium No. IAUS240, 2006
W. Hartkopf, E. Guinan & P. Harmanec, eds.
c© 2006 International Astronomical Union
DOI: 00.0000/X000000000000000X
Analysis of the eclipsing binaries in the LMC
discovered by OGLE: Period distribution
and frequency of the short-period binaries
Tsevi Mazeh1, Omer Tamuz1 and Pierre North2
1School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences,
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
email: mazeh@wise.tau.ac.il
2 Laboratoire d’Astrophysique, Ecole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne (EPFL),
Observatoire, CH-1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
Abstract.
We review the results of our analysis of the OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries (Mazeh, Tamuz &
North 2006), using EBAS — Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver, an automated algorithm to
fit lightcurves of eclipsing binaries (Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006).
After being corrected for observational selection effects, the set of detected eclipsing binaries
yielded the period distribution and the frequency of all LMC short-period binaries, and not just
the eclipsing systems.
Somewhat surprisingly, the period distribution is consistent with a flat distribution in log P
between 2 and 10 days. The total number of binaries with periods shorter than 10 days in the
LMC was estimated to be about 5000. This figure led us to suggest that (0.7 ± 0.4)% of the
main-sequence A- and B-type stars are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days.
This frequency is substantially smaller than the fraction of binaries found by small Galactic
radial-velocity surveys of B stars.
Keywords. methods: data analysis, binaries: eclipsing, Magellanic Clouds
1. Introduction
The OGLE project yielded a huge photometric dataset of the LMC (Udalski et al.
2000), which includes a few thousand eclipsing binary lightcurves (Wyrzykowski et al.
2003). This dataset allows for the first time a statistical analysis of the population of
short-period binaries of an entire galaxy.
To analyse this set of lightcurves we constructed EBAS (Eclipsing Binary Auto-
mated Solver), an automated algorithm (Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006) to fit eclipsing
lightcurves. Having solved the lightcurves with EBAS, we proceeded to derive the sta-
tistical features of the eclipsing binaries of the LMC (Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006). In
this short paper we present the EBAS algorithm and show two results of interest: a flat
log-period distribution and a lower-than-expected binary frequency of the short-period
early-type binaries.
2. The EBAS Algorithm
EBAS is based on the EBOP code (Popper & Etzel 1981, Etzel 1981), which consists
of two main components. The first component generates a lightcurve for a given set of
orbital elements and stellar parameters, while the second finds the parameters that best
fit the observational data. We only used the lightcurve generator, and wrote our own
code to search for the best-fit set of elements that minimize the χ2 statistic.
1
2 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
The search for the global χ2 minimum is performed in two stages. We first find a good
initial guess, and then use a simulated annealing algorithm to find the global minimum.
While the first stage is merely aimed at finding an initial guess for the next stage, in most
cases it already converges to a very good solution. A full description of the algorithm is
given in Tamuz, Mazeh & North (2006).
During the development of EBAS we found that some solutions with low χ2 might be
unsatisfactory. While, for such solutions, the value of χ2 is reasonable, a visual inspection
of the residuals, plotted as a function of phase, revealed that the fit is sub-optimal. For
such cases, human interaction was needed to improve the fit, or to otherwise decree the
solution unsatisfactory. In order to allow an automated approach, an automatic algorithm
must replace human evaluation.
We therefore defined a new estimator which is sensitive to the correlation between
adjacent residuals of the measurements relative to the model. This feature is in contrast
to the behaviour of the χ2 function, which measures the sum of the squares of the
residuals, but is not sensitive to the signs of the different residuals and their order.
Denoting by ki the number of residuals in the i-th run (a series of consecutive residuals
with the same sign), we defined the ’alarm’ A as:
A =
1
χ2
M∑
i=1
(
ri,1
σi,1
+
ri,2
σi,2
+ · · ·+
ri,ki
σi,ki
)2
− (1 +
4
pi
) , (2.1)
where ri,j is the residual of the j-th measurement of the i-th run and σi,j is its uncertainty.
The sum is over all the measurements in a run and then over the M runs. Dividing by
χ2 assures that, in contrast to χ2 itself, A is not sensitive to a systematic overestimation
or underestimation of the uncertainties. It is easy to see that A is minimal when the
residuals alternate between positive and negative values, and that long runs with large
residuals increase its value.
When a solution found by EBAS showed high A, EBAS automatically classified the
solution as unsatisfactory and started a modified search of the parameter space in order
to find a better solution. Systems for which a low enough A solution could not be found
were marked as such. Visual inspection of these lightcurves and their fitted models showed
that most of them are close contact systems which EBOP did not model well.
3. Analysis of the OGLE LMC Eclipsing Binaries
The LMC OGLE-II photometric campaign (Udalski et al. 2000) was carried out from
1997 to 2000, during which between 260 and 512 measurements in the I band were taken
for 21 fields (Zebrun et al. 2001). Wyrzykowski et al. (2003) searched the photometric
data base and identified 2580 binaries. We analysed those systems with EBAS and found
1931 acceptable solutions. We excluded all binaries with sum of radii larger than 0.6 of
the binary separation. Furthermore, we excluded also binaries with high A values, which
indicated that they are probably contact systems that EBOP can not model properly
(see Mazeh, Tamuz & North (2006) for details).
The very large sample of 1931 short-period binaries enables us to derive some statisti-
cal features of the population of short-period binaries in the LMC. However, the sample
suffers from serious observational selection effects, which affected the discovery of the
eclipsing binaries. To be able to correct for the selection effects we needed a well-defined
homogeneous sample. We therefore trimmed the sample before deriving the period dis-
tribution. Our trimmed sample consisted of all systems of magnitude between 17 and
19 in the I band with periods shorter than 10 days and having main-sequence color
Period distribution and frequency of short-period binaries in the LMC 3
−0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
V−I
I
Figure 1. The I-magnitude as a function of the averaged V − I colour of all eclipsing binaries
of the sample. Only binaries that appear inside the trapezoid were included in the trimmed
sample.
(see Fig 1). In this way we chose only systems with A and B main-sequence primaries.
See Mazeh, Tamuz & North (2006) for a full description of the trimmed sample.
3.1. The period distribution
In order to explore the period distribution of the LMC short-period binaries, and not
just the eclipsing binaries, we needed to correct for the selection effects which affect the
likelihood of a binary system to be eclipsing, and to be detected by the OGLE survey. We
did this by calculating for each eclipsing binary in the trimmed sample a weight w, which
was the reciprocal of the probability of being detected as an eclipsing binary, assuming
random orientation and phase (see Tamuz, Mazeh & North 2006). When calculating the
period distribution of the binary population we then considered that eclipsing binary as
w systems.
We plotted in Fig 2 two period histograms of the trimmed sample, before and after the
correction for the observational effects was applied. We emphasize that if the correction
was applied properly, the right panel represents the period distribution of all binaries in
the LMC with I-magnitude between 17 and 19, and with sum of radii smaller than 0.6,
and not only the eclipsing binaries.
The corrected period histogram shows clearly a distribution that rises up to about
logP = 0.3, and then flattens off, suggesting that the period distribution of the short-
period binaries with early-type binaries is consistent with a flat log distribution between
2 and 10 days.
3.2. The frequency of the short-period binaries
As stated above, the corrections applied by Mazeh, Tamuz & North 2006 allowed us
to study the distributions of all short-period binaries, up to 10 days, and not only the
eclipsing binaries. We wished to take advantage of this feature of our analysis and esti-
mate, within the limits of the sample, the total number of binaries in the LMC and their
fractional frequency.
4 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
0 0.5 1
0
20
40
60
80
100
Log P (days)
0 0.5 1
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Log P (days)
Figure 2. The period distribution of the binaries in the LMC. The left panel shows the period
histogram of the trimmed sample, while the right one shows the corrected histogram
The sum of weights of the 938 binaries in the trimmed sample was 4585. This means
that to our best estimate there are 4585 short-period binaries in the LMC that fulfill
the constraints we had on the trimmed sample. To get the total number of binaries with
periods shorter than 10 days we had to add the high-alarm binaries and the ones with
large radii; since the added systems are close binaries, their detection probability reaches
almost unity so we did not correct for undetected binaries in their case. When we added
those we ended up with 5004 binaries.
We therefore suggested that the number of binaries in the LMC, with period shorter
than 10 days, with I between 17 and 19, and for which the V − I colour of the system
indicates a main-sequence primary, is about 5000. Assuming Wyrzykowski et al. (2003)
might not have detected all the eclipsing binaries in the dataset and classified them as
such, we arbitrarily assigned an error of 30% to the number of binaries in the sample.
In order to estimate the fractional frequency of A- and B-type main-sequence stars
which reside in binaries that could have been detected by OGLE we had to estimate how
many main-sequence single stars were found by OGLE in the same range of magnitudes
and colours. To do that, we applied exactly the same trimming procedure we performed
above to the whole OGLE dataset of LMC stars and found 332,297 main-sequence stars in
the I-range of 17–19. However, the luminosity of a binary is brighter than the luminosity
of its primary by a magnitude that depends on the light ratio of the two stars of the
system. Therefore, we considered stellar range of I = 17.5 - 19.5, and found 705,535
stars. We therefore adopted 700,000 as a representative number of single stars in the
LMC similar to the population of our binary sample. We arbitrarily assign an error of
50% to this figure.
We therefore concluded that (0.7± 0.4)% of the main-sequence A- and B-type stars in
the LMC are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 days.
Period distribution and frequency of short-period binaries in the LMC 5
4. Discussion
4.1. The period distribution
The log flat period distribution derived here is probably not consistent with the period
distribution of Duquennoy & Mayor (1991), who adopted a Gaussian with logP = 4.8
and σ = 2.3, P being measured in days. Their distribution would provide within the
same log P interval almost twice as many systems at logP = 1.0 than at logP = 0.3
(more precisely, the factor would be 1.7), while the new derived distribution is probably
flat.
It is interesting to note that Heacox (1998) reanalysed the data of Duquennoy & Mayor (1991)
and claimed that f(a), the distribution of the G-dwarf orbital semi-major axis, a, is
f(a) ∝ a−1da, which implies a flat log orbital separation distribution. This is equivalent
to the present probable result, although the latter refers to LMC binaries with A- and
B-type primaries, and is limited only to a very small range of orbital separation.
The flat log-period distribution implies a flat log orbital-separation distribution for a
given total binary mass. Such a distribution indicates that there is no preferred length
scale for the formation of short-period binaries (Heacox 1998), at least in the range
between 0.05 and 0.16 AU, for a total binary mass of 5 M⊙. Alternatively, the results
indicate that the specific angular momentum distribution is flat on a log scale at the 1019
cm2s−1 range.
4.2. The binary fraction
The fractional frequency found here is surprisingly small — (0.7 ± 0.4)%. It would be
interesting to compare the frequency of B-star binaries found here for the LMC with
a similar frequency study of B stars in our Galaxy. However, such a large systematic
study of eclipsing binaries is not available. Instead, a few radial-velocity and photometric
searches for binaries in relatively small Galactic samples were performed. Wolff (1978)
studied the frequency of binaries in sharp-lined B7–B9 stars. Her Table 1 presents 73
such stars with V sin i < 100 kms−1, among which 17 are members of binary systems
with Porb < 10 days. Her sample yields a percentage of 23%, one and a half orders of
magnitude larger than what we found in the LMC.
Similar and even higher values of binary frequency were derived for B stars in Galactic
clusters and associations. Morrell & Levato (1991) have determined the rate of binaries
among B stars in the Orion OB1 association, and obtained an overall frequency of binaries
with Porb < 10 days of 26± 6%. Garcia & Mermilliod (2001) found a rate of binaries as
high as 82% among stars hotter than B1.5 in the very young open cluster NGC 6231,
though in a sample of 34 stars only. Most orbits have periods shorter than 10 days.
Raboud (1996) estimated a rate of binaries of at least 52% for 36 B1-B9 stars in the
same cluster.
These studies show that binaries hosting B-type stars tend to be more frequent in
young Galactic clusters than in the field. However, even though our LMC binaries are
representative of the LMC field rather than of LMC clusters, the frequency we derived
appears much lower than that of the binaries in the Galactic field.
A few photometric studies were devoted to the search of eclipsing binaries in Galactic
globular clusters (e.g., Yan & Reid 1996, Kaluzny 1997). One such study was the HST
8.3-day observations of 47 Tuc (Albrow et al. 2001), which monitored 46,422 stars and
discovered 5 eclipsing binaries with periods longer than about 4 days. From their con-
clusion we derive (2 ± 1)% for periods between 2 and 10 days. This value, derived for
late-type stars, is much smaller than the frequency derived by the radial-velocity surveys
of B stars, and is close to the (0.7± 0.4)% frequency we derived for the LMC.
6 Mazeh, Tamuz & North
We conclude, therefore, that the frequency of binaries we found in the LMC is substan-
tially smaller than the frequency found by Galactic radial-velocity surveys. The detected
frequency of B-type binaries is larger by a factor of 30 or more than the frequency we
found, while the binary frequency of K- and G-type stars is probably larger by a factor
of four (Halbwachs et al. (2003) found 2.7 ± 0.8 per cent binaries with P < 10 days in
the solar neighbourhood). On the other hand, the binary frequency found by photomet-
ric searches in 47 Tuc is only slightly higher and still consistent with the frequency we
deduced for the LMC. It seems that the frequency derived from photometric searches is
consistently smaller than the one found by radial-velocity observations. We are not aware
of any observational effect that could cause such a large difference between the radial
velocity and the photometric studies. Therefore, we suggest that the large difference in
the binary frequencies is probably real and remains a mystery. Obviously, it would be ex-
tremely useful and interesting to have studies of eclipsing binaries similar to the present
one in our Galaxy, as well as in other nearby galaxies.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the OGLE team, and to L. Wyrzykowski in particular, for the
photometric data set and for the eclipsing binary analysis. This work was supported by
the Israeli Science Foundation through grant no. 03/233.
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Analysis of the eclipsing binaries in the LMC discovered by OGLE: Period
  distribution and frequency of the short-period binaries

Analysis of the eclipsing binaries in the LMC discovered by OGLE: Period distribution and frequency of the short-period binaries

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