A Calibration Audit of a Gaia XP White-Dwarf Main-Sequence Binary Catalog: How Much the BP-Band Residual Contaminates at Its Bound and Above

arXiv:2607.08856 · astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR · Submitted 2026-08-24 · Read on arXiv

Karan Akbari

astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR

Submitted: 2026-08-24

Updated: 2026-08-25

Comments: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Code, configurations, and the committed records behind every quoted number are at https://github.com/WizardEternal/wdms-xp-calibration

Code: https://github.com/WizardEternal/wdms-xp-calibration

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: A Gaussian-process classifier on Gaia DR3 XP spectra produced about 30, 000 white-dwarf main-sequence (WD--MS) binary candidates, each with a probability but no likelihood or goodness-of-fit.

Terminology

Abstract

A Gaussian-process classifier on Gaia DR3 XP spectra produced about 30, 000 white-dwarf main-sequence (WD--MS) binary candidates, each with a probability but no likelihood or goodness-of-fit. The corrected XP BP band keeps a local blue-flux residual of about 2%, where a hot white dwarf also adds flux. We asked whether that residual contaminates the selection at its realistic amplitude. It does not. The answer turns on one unit: 2% of total flux, deposited in the narrow blue band, is a median 55% local excess on a red MS star, 27 times the same number read locally. Injected as a 2% local excess it gives a spurious rate of 0.08 on a 0.05 baseline through the chi squared threshold standing in for the classifier, and an amortized posterior keeps 0.84 of its 90% coverage against a clean 0.88. The selection fails only above a 10--20% local excess and reaches 0.96 near 50%, the raw uncorrected bias that correction and the B<18 cut remove. A model-comparison gate certifies binarity only above a WD flux share near 0.05; at the catalog's median share the statistics invert and the spurious carry the larger chi squared improvement. The clean reliability signal is off-cooling-sequence UV deficiency (GALEX FUV detection 0.19 against 0.50), robust to a distance control. At the residual the correction leaves, the contamination hypothesis is a null; the open regime is the faint half, where that residual is unmeasured. The audit gives the amplitude it would take, and the shape of the failure past it.

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