Gaia Focused Product Release: Radial velocity time series of long-period variables

Abstract :

Context : The third Gaia Data Release (DR3) provided photometric time series of more than 2 million long-period variable (LPV) candidates. Anticipating the publication of full radial-velocity data planned with Data Release 4, this Focused Product Release (FPR) provides radial-velocity time series for a selection of LPV candidates with high-quality observations.
Aims : We describe the production and content of the Gaia catalog of LPV radial-velocity time series, and the methods used to compute the variability parameters published as part of the Gaia FPR.
Methods : Starting from the DR3 catalog of LPV candidates, we applied several filters to construct a sample of sources with high-quality radial-velocity measurements. We modeled their radial-velocity and photometric time series to derive their periods and amplitudes, and further refined the sample by requiring compatibility between the radial-velocity period and at least one of the G, G_BP, or G_RP photometric periods.
Results : The catalog includes radial-velocity time series and variability parameters for 9614 sources in the magnitude range 6 ≲ G/mag ≲ 14, including a flagged top-quality subsample of 6093 stars whose radial-velocity periods are fully compatible with the values derived from the G, G_BP, and G_RP photometric time series. The radial-velocity time series contain a mean of 24 measurements per source taken unevenly over a duration of about three years. We identify the great majority of the sources (88%) as genuine LPV candidates, with about half of them showing a pulsation period and the other half displaying a long secondary period. The remaining 12% of the catalog consists of candidate ellipsoidal binaries. Quality checks against radial velocities available in the literature show excellent agreement. We provide some illustrative examples and cautionary remarks.
Conclusions : The publication of radial-velocity time series for almost ten thousand LPV candidates constitutes, by far, the largest such database available to date in the literature. The availability of simultaneous photometric measurements gives a unique added value to the Gaia catalog.

Publication : Astronomy & Astrophysics, Volume 680, id.A36, 38 pp.
DOI : 10.1051/0004-6361/202347287 
Bibcode : 2023A&A...680A..36G
Keywords : stars: AGB and post-AGB; stars: variables: general; stars: carbon; methods: data analysis; catalogs; techniques: radial velocities; Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics