Hypervelocity star candidates from Gaia DR2 and DR3 proper motions and parallaxes

Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: rdscholz@aip.de

Received: 30 October 2023
Accepted: 12 February 2024

Abstract

Context. Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) unbound to the Galaxy can be formed with extreme stellar interactions, for example close encounters with supermassive black holes or in massive star clusters, supernova explosions in binary systems, or the stripping of dwarf galaxies. Observational evidence comes from measurements of radial velocities (RVs) of objects crossing the outer Galactic halo and of tangential velocities based on high proper motions (HPMs) and distances of relatively nearby stars.

Aims. I searched for new nearby HVS candidates and reviewed known objects using their Gaia astrometric measurements.

Methods. Candidates were selected with significant Gaia parallaxes of >0.1mas, proper motions of >20 mas yr⁻¹, and computed galactocentric tangential velocities vtan_g>500 km s⁻¹. The DR2 and DR3 samples of several thousand HVS candidates were studied with respect to their proper motions, sky distribution, number of observations, location in crowded fields, colour-magnitude diagrams, selection effects with magnitude, and RVs in DR3. The 72 most extreme (vtan_g>700 km s⁻¹) and nearest (within 4kpc) DR3 HVS candidates were investigated with respect to detected close neighbours, flags, and astrometric quality parameters of objects of similar magnitudes in DR3. The quality checks involved HPM objects in a global comparison and all objects in the vicinity of each target.

Results. Spurious HPMs in the Galactic centre region led to false HVS interpretations in Gaia DR2 and are still present in DR3, although to a lesser extent. Otherwise there is good agreement between the HPMs of HVS candidates in DR2 and DR3. However, HVS candidates selected from DR2 tend to have larger parallaxes, and hence lower tangential velocities in DR3. Most DR3 RVs are much lower than the tangential velocities, indicating that the DR3 HVS candidates are still affected by underestimated parallaxes. None of the 72 extreme nearby DR3 HVS candidates, including three D⁶ stars, passed all the quality checks. Their tangential velocities may turn out to be lower, but at least some of them still appear unbound to the Galaxy.