The primordial binary population in OB associations

Abstract

We describe our method to find the primordial binary population in the Sco OB2 association. We present the results of our ADONIS and VLT/NACO near-infrared adaptive optics binarity surveys of A and late-B stars in Sco OB2. We combine these results with literature data on visual, spectroscopic, and astrometric binary stars. With our observations we remove part of the selection effects present in the combined dataset. Using simulated observations the remaining biases can be removed in order to derive the true binary population. Detailed N-body simulations, including stellar and binary evolution are required to derive constraints on the binary population which was present just after the natal gas has been removed from Sco OB2, i.e., the primordial binary population. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.