• Derivative Spectroscopy and its Application at Detecting the Weak Emission/Absorption Lines

    Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2024-03-29 Cooperative journals: 《Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics》

    Abstract: The development of spectroscopic survey telescopes like Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment and Sloan Digital Sky Survey has opened up unprecedented opportunities for stellar classification. Specific types of stars, such as early-type emission-line stars and those with stellar winds, can be distinguished by the profiles of their spectral lines. In this paper, we introduce a method based on derivative spectroscopy (DS) designed to detect signals within complex backgrounds and provide a preliminary estimation of curve profiles. This method exhibits a unique advantage in identifying weak signals and unusual spectral line profiles when compared to other popular line detection methods. We validated our approach using synthesis spectra, demonstrating that DS can detect emission signals three times fainter than Gaussian fitting. Furthermore, we applied our method to 579,680 co-added spectra from LAMOST Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey, identifying 16,629 spectra with emission peaks around the Hα line from 10,963 stars. These spectra were classified into three distinct morphological groups, resulting in nine subclasses as follows. (1) Emission peak above the pseudo-continuum line (single peak, double peaks, emission peak situated within an absorption line, P Cygni profile, Inverse P Cygni profile); (2) Emission peak below the pseudo-continuum line (sharp emission peak, double absorption peaks, emission peak shifted to one side of the absorption line); (3) Emission peak between the pseudo-continuum line.

  • Mass-Ratio Distribution of Binaries From the LAMOST-MRS Survey

    Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19

    Abstract: Binary evolution leads to the formation of important objects crucial to the development of astrophysics, but the statistical properties of binary populations are still poorly understood. The LAMOST-MRS has provided a large sample of stars to study the properties of binary populations, especially for the mass ratio distributions and the binary fractions. We have devised a Peak Amplitude Ratio (PAR) approach to derive the mass ratio of a binary system based on results obtained from its spectrum. By computing a cross-correlation function (CCF), we established a relationship between the derived mass ratio and the PARs of the binary systems. By utilizing spectral observations obtained from LAMSOT DR6 & DR7, we applied the PAR approach to form distributions of the derived mass ratio of the binary systems to the spectral types. We selected the mass ratio within the range of $0.6-1.0$ for investigating the mass-ratio distribution. Through a power-law fitting, we obtained the power index $\gamma$ values of $-0.42\pm0.27$, $0.03\pm0.12$, and $2.12\pm0.19$ for A-, F-, and G-type stars identified in the sample, respectively. The derived $\gamma$-values display an increasing trend toward lower primary star masses, and G-type binaries tend to be more in twins. The close binary fractions (for $P\lesssim 150\,{\rm d}$ and $q\gtrsim 0.6$) in our sample for A, F and G binaries are $7.6\pm 0.5 \%$, $4.9\pm 0.2 \%$ and $3.7 \pm 0.1 \%$, respectively. Note that the PAR approach can be applied to large spectroscopic surveys of stars.

  • The Early-type Stars from LAMOST survey: Atmospheric parameters

    Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19

    Abstract: Massive stars play key roles in many astrophysical processes. Deriving atmospheric parameters of massive stars is important to understand their physical properties and thus are key inputs to trace their evolution. Here we report our work on adopting the data-driven technique Stellar LAbel Machine ({\tt SLAM}) with the non-LTE TLUSTY synthetic spectra as the training dataset to estimate the stellar parameters of LAMOST optical spectra for early-type stars. We apply two consistency tests to verify this machine learning method and compare stellar labels given by {\tt SLAM} with that in literature for several objects having high-resolution spectra. We provide the stellar labels of effective temperature ($T_\mathrm{eff}$), surface gravity ($\log{g}$), metallicity ([M/H]), and projected rotational velocity ($v\sin{i}$) for 3,931 and 578 early-type stars from LAMOST Low-Resolution Survey (LAMOST-LRS) and Medium-Resolution Survey (LAMOST-MRS), respectively. To estimate the average statistical uncertainties of our results, we calculated the standard deviation between the predicted stellar label and the pre-labeled published values from the high-resolution spectra. The uncertainties of the four parameters are $\sigma(T_\mathrm{eff}) = 2,185 $K, $\sigma(\log{g}) = 0.29$ dex, and $\sigma(v\sin{i}) = 11\, \rm km\,s^{-1}$ for MRS, and $\sigma(T_\mathrm{eff}) = 1,642 $K, $\sigma(\log{g}) = 0.25$ dex, and $\sigma(v\sin{i}) = 42\, \rm km\,s^{-1}$ for LRS spectra, respectively. We notice that parameters of $T_\mathrm{eff}$, $\log{g}$ and [M/H] can be better constrained using LRS spectra rather than using MRS spectra, most likely due to their broad wavelength coverage, while $v\sin{i}$ is constrained better by MRS spectra than by LRS spectra, probably due to the relatively accurate line profiles of MRS spectra.

  • The Binarity of Early-type Stars from LAMOST Medium-resolution Spectroscopic Survey

    Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19

    Abstract: Massive binaries play significant roles in many fields. Identification of massive stars, particularly massive binaries, is of great importance. In this paper, by adopting the technique of measuring the equivalent widths of several spectral lines, we identified 9,382 early-type stars from LAMOST medium-resolution survey and divided the sample into four groups, T1 ($\sim$O-B4), T2 ($\sim$B5), T3 ($\sim$B7), and T4 ($\sim$B8-A). The relative radial velocities $RV_{\rm rel}$ were calculated using the Maximum Likelihood Estimation. The stars with significant changes of $RV_{\rm rel}$ and at least larger than 15.57km s$^{-1}$ were identified as spectroscopic binaries. We found that the observed spectroscopic binary fractions for the four groups are $24.6\%\pm0.5\%$, $20.8\%\pm0.6\%$, $13.7\%\pm0.3\%$, and $7.4\%\pm0.3\%$, respectively. Assuming that orbital period ($P$) and mass ratio ($q$) have intrinsic distributions as $f(P) \propto P^\pi$ (1\textless$P$\textless1000 days) and $f(q) \propto q^\kappa$ (0.1\textless$q$\textless1), respectively, we conducted a series of Monte-Carlo simulations to correct observational biases for estimating the intrinsic multiplicity properties. The results show that the intrinsic binary fractions for the four groups are 68$\%\pm8\%$, 52$\%\pm3\%$, 44$\%\pm6\%$, and 44$\%\pm6\%$, respectively. The best estimated values for $\pi$ are -1$\pm0.1$, -1.1$\pm0.05$, -1.1$\pm0.1$, and -0.6$\pm0.05$, respectively. The $\kappa$ cannot be constrained for groups T1 and T2 and is -2.4$\pm0.3$ for group T3 and -1.6$\pm0.3$ for group T4. We confirmed the relationship of a decreasing trend in binary fractions towards late-type stars. No correlation between the spectral type and the orbital period distribution has been found yet, possibly due to the limitation of observational cadence.

  • A Roche Lobe-filling hot Subdwarf and White Dwarf Binary: possible detection of an ejected common envelope

    Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19

    Abstract: Binaries consisting of a hot subdwarf star and an accreting white dwarf (WD) are sources of gravitational wave radiation at low frequencies and possible progenitors of type Ia supernovae if the WD mass is large enough. Here, we report the discovery of the third binary known of this kind: it consists of a hot subdwarf O (sdO) star and a WD with an orbital period of 3.495 hours and an orbital shrinkage of 0.1 s in 6 yr. The sdO star overfills its Roche lobe and likely transfers mass to the WD via an accretion disk. From spectroscopy, we obtain an effective temperature of $T_{\mathrm{eff}}=54\,240\pm1\,840$ K and a surface gravity of $\log{g}=4.841\pm0.108$ for the sdO star. From the light curve analysis, we obtain a sdO mass of $M_{\mathrm{sdO}}=0.55$ ${\mathrm{M_{\odot}}}$ and a mass ratio of $q=M_{\mathrm{WD}}/M_{\mathrm{sdO}}=0.738\pm0.001$. Also, we estimate that the disk has a radius of $\sim 0.41R_\odot$ and a thickness of $\sim 0.18R_\odot$. The origin of this binary is probably a common envelope ejection channel, where the progenitor of the sdO star is either an RGB star or, more likely, an early AGB star; the sdO star will subsequently evolve into a WD and merge with its WD companion, likely resulting in an R CrB star. The outstanding feature in the spectrum of this object is strong Ca H&K lines, which are blueshifted by $\sim$200 km/s and likely originate from the recently ejected common envelope, and we estimated that the remnant CE material in the binary system has a density $\sim 6\times 10^{-10} {\rm g/cm^3}$.