Testing Models for Fully and Partially Stripped Low-mass Stars with Gaia: Implications for Hot Subdwarfs, Binary RR Lyrae, and Black Hole Impostors

Abstract

When low-mass (≲2M⊙) red giants lose their envelopes to a companion just before the helium flash, the resulting mass transfer can produce binaries hosting hot subdwarfs, horizontal branch stars, and undermassive red clump stars. Recent work predicts a continuum of such products, from fully stripped hot subdwarfs to partially stripped horizontal branch and red clump stars, and suggests that young, metal-rich RR Lyrae can form when partial stripping leaves a helium-burning star in the instability strip. To enable direct comparison with observations, we model these binaries in a simulated Milky Way–like galaxy with a realistic metallicity-dependent star formation history and 3D dust map, generate epoch astrometry using Gaia’s scanning law, and fit it with the cascade of astrometric models applied in Gaia DR3. We compare the simulated population to DR3 observations of hot subdwarfs, RR Lyrae, and red giants with high astrometric mass functions. The model significantly overpredicts the number of hot subdwarfs with astrometric binary solutions, partly because the predicted flux ratios are more unequal than observed. It also predicts ≳100 RR Lyrae with DR3 astrometric orbital solutions, while none are observed. We conclude that RR Lyrae in au-scale binaries may be substantially rarer than predicted. In contrast, the model plausibly explains the population of red clump stars with high astrometric mass functions, which we interpret as potential black hole impostors. We predict that ∼10 × more stripped-star binaries will be detectable in DR4, whose sensitivity to longer periods will more strongly test wide-orbit systems.