Parameters of the Radcliffe Wave from Masers, Radio Stars, and T Tauri Stars

Abstract

The Radcliffe wave is shown to be present in both positions and vertical velocities of masers and radio stars belonging to the Local Arm. At the same time, it appears that the Radcliffe structure is not a wave in the true sense of the word. It more closely resembles a local high-amplitude spike that rapidly tails off. This structure has the largest amplitude in the immediate vicinity of the Sun, where the main contributors are Gould Belt stars. Based on a spectral analysis, we have obtained the following estimates of the geometric and kinematic parameters of the wave: the maximum vertical coordinate $z_{\max}=87± 4$ pc and the wavelength $λ=2.8± 0.1$ kpc, the vertical velocity perturbation amplitude reaches $W_{\max}=5.1± 0.7$ km s${}^{-1}$, and the wavelength found from the vertical velocities is $λ=3.9± 1.6$ kpc. The Radcliffe wave also manifests itself in the positions of very young pre-main-sequence stars. We have extracted a sample of such stars from the Gaia DR2 $×$ AllWISE database and obtained the following estimates from them: $z_{\max}=118± 3$ pc and $λ=2.0± 0.1$ kpc.