Hunting black holes with Gaia

We predict the number of black holes with stellar companions that are potentially detectable with Gaia astrometry over the course of its 5-yr mission. Our model estimates that nearly 2 × 105 astrometric binaries hosting black holes and stellar companions brighter than Gaia’s detection threshold, G ∼ 20, should be discovered with 5σ sensitivity. Among these detectable binaries, systems with longer orbital periods are favoured, and black hole and stellar companion masses in the range MBH ∼ 6–10 M⊙ and M* ∼ 1–2 M⊙, respectively, are expected to dominate.

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