Paper detail

Disk Material Inflates Gaia RUWE Values in Single Stars

An understanding of the dynamical evolution of binary star systems, and their effects on stellar and planetary evolution, requires well-characterized binary populations across stellar ages. However, the observational resources required to find and characterize binaries are expensive. With the release of high-precision Gaia astrometry, the re-normalized unit weight error (RUWE) statistic has been shown to reveal the presence of binary systems, with RUWE values greater than 1.2 indicating the presence of a stellar companion within $ \sim 1$". Our goal is to assess whether this new diagnostic, which was developed for field-age systems ($>$1 Gyr), applies to young systems; specifically, those that host circumstellar disks. With a control sample of single-star systems, compiled from high-contrast imagining surveys of the Taurus and Upper Scorpius star-forming regions, we compare the RUWE values for systems with and without circumstellar disks. We show that the presence of a protoplanetary disk alone can result in inflated RUWE values. Based on the distribution of the RUWE for disk-bearing single stars, we suggest a more conservative single-star -- binary threshold is warranted in the presence of disk material. We place this cutoff at the distribution's 95th percentile, with RUWE $= 2.5$.