Observational signs of wide binary stars dissolution in Gaia DR2 data

Abstract

Binary and common proper motion stars within 100 pc of the Sun are being investigated using Gaia DR2 data. An artificial random pairs sample is constructed to exclude possible random pairing contamination. Numerical estimation of this contamination shows that the chosen method to select the common proper motion stars yields little contamination even at high separations. In a logarithmic scale the separation distribution appear to have a minimum at ≈ 0.5 pc, most likely related to binary star dissolution, with further increase formed by dissolved, slowly distancing components.