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Description
We examine the effects that unresolved binaries have on the determination of various stellar atmospheric parameters for targets from the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) using numerical modeling, a grid of synthetic spectra, and the SEGUE Stellar Parameter Pipeline (SSPP). The SEGUE survey, a component of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II (SDSS-II) project focusing on Galactic structure, provides medium resolution spectroscopy for over 200000 stars of various spectral types over a large area on the sky. To model undetected binaries that may be in this sample, we use a variety of mass distributions for the primary and secondary stars in conjunction with empirically determined relationships for orbital parameters to determine the fraction of G-K dwarf stars, defined by SDSS color cuts as having 0.48<=(g-r)_0_<=0.75, that will be blended with a secondary companion. We focus on the G-K dwarf sample in SEGUE as it records the history of chemical enrichment in our galaxy. To determine the effect of the secondary on the spectroscopic parameters, specifically effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity, and [{alpha}/Fe], we synthesize a grid of model spectra from 3275 to 7850K and [Fe/H]=-0.5 to -2.5 from MARCS model atmospheres using TurboSpectrum. These temperature and metallicity ranges roughly correspond to a stellar mass range of 0.1-1.0M_{sun}_. We assume that both stars in the pair have the same metallicity. We analyze both "infinite" signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) models and degraded versions of the spectra, at median S/N of 50, 25, and 10.
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