Pre-registered Gaia DR4 predictions for nearby white dwarfs with excess astrometric noise

We select white dwarfs within 50 pc whose Gaia DR3 astrometry is poorly fitted by a single-star model (RUWE > 2), with no DR3 orbital solution, no sign of a resolved double and no bright neighbour within 5 arcsec. Nine objects pass. Six of them are warmer than 7000 K and have published binarity or photometric masses of 0.31-0.45 Msun, too low for single white dwarfs, so the selection mainly recovers unresolved double degenerates. LHS 3236, which has a published astrometric orbit (P = 4.03 yr, a0 = 4.37 mas), is used as a control: our DR3-based amplitude estimate (4.1 mas) reproduces it. Two objects, UCAC4 238-179131 (WD J2126-4224, 25.6 pc, RUWE 9.1) and LSPM J1318+7353 (36 pc, RUWE 3.5), have no published companion that we could find. Before the Gaia DR4 release (2026-12-02) we fix, for all nine white dwarfs: the expected photocentre amplitude, the minimum mass of a dark companion as a function of orbital period, falsifiable predictions (persistence of the excess noise, amplitude within a factor 2, P < 107 d for G 177-31 from its known RV variability, recovery of the LHS 3236 orbit, and a test of the predicted gap near 1 au in the double white dwarf separation distribution), and explicit rejection rules. A secondary list of 55 high-RUWE stars with constant Gaia RVS velocity is included. The verification script (b_verifica_dr4.py) is fixed in this deposit and will be run unchanged on DR4. The analysis was carried out with the assistance of an AI model (Claude, Anthropic); see the section "Author contributions and use of AI" in the note.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-11-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23867996
Primary Topic
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
Type
preprint
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preprint

Pre-registered Gaia DR4 predictions for nearby white dwarfs with excess astrometric noise

Antonio Acri
1 links
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
preprint

Pre-registered Gaia DR4 predictions for nearby white dwarfs with excess astrometric noise

Antonio Acri
preprint en

Abstract

We select white dwarfs within 50 pc whose Gaia DR3 astrometry is poorly fitted by a single-star model (RUWE > 2), with no DR3 orbital solution, no sign of a resolved double and no bright neighbour within 5 arcsec. Nine objects pass. Six of them are warmer than 7000 K and have published binarity or photometric masses of 0.31-0.45 Msun, too low for single white dwarfs, so the selection mainly recovers unresolved double degenerates. LHS 3236, which has a published astrometric orbit (P = 4.03 yr, a0 = 4.37 mas), is used as a control: our DR3-based amplitude estimate (4.1 mas) reproduces it. Two objects, UCAC4 238-179131 (WD J2126-4224, 25.6 pc, RUWE 9.1) and LSPM J1318+7353 (36 pc, RUWE 3.5), have no published companion that we could find. Before the Gaia DR4 release (2026-12-02) we fix, for all nine white dwarfs: the expected photocentre amplitude, the minimum mass of a dark companion as a function of orbital period, falsifiable predictions (persistence of the excess noise, amplitude within a factor 2, P < 107 d for G 177-31 from its known RV variability, recovery of the LHS 3236 orbit, and a test of the predicted gap near 1 au in the double white dwarf separation distribution), and explicit rejection rules. A secondary list of 55 high-RUWE stars with constant Gaia RVS velocity is included. The verification script (b_verifica_dr4.py) is fixed in this deposit and will be run unchanged on DR4. The analysis was carried out with the assistance of an AI model (Claude, Anthropic); see the section "Author contributions and use of AI" in the note.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
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Pre-registered Gaia DR4 predictions for nearby white dwarfs with excess astrometric noise — Antonio Acri · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS