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Gaia mission and its follow-up observations have discovered binaries containing single BHs and visible stars without mass transfer, so-called Gaia BHs. One important question is if Gaia BHs have binary BHs (BBHs), hereafter Gaia BBHs, instead of single BHs. We have investigated how efficiently Gaia BBHs are formed in open star clusters, one of the promising formation sites of Gaia BHs, by means of gravitational N-body simulations. Limiting Gaia BHs' periods to 10²-10⁴ days, we have found that there are no Gaia BBHs in the solar-metallicity environments, while the formation efficiency of Gaia BBHs is not small (10^-6 M_^-1 or 10 % of Gaia BHs) in subsolar-metallicity environments. However, the probability of Gaia BBHs hidden in Gaia BHs is only 1 %. This is because most of the BBHs merge within 1 Gyr through gravitational wave radiation. Note that the ages of discovered Gaia BHs are more than 1 Gyr. If we extend Gaia BHs' periods to 10⁴-10⁵ days, the probability becomes higher to 10 %. In this case, a large fraction of BBHs can have enough wide orbits not to merge within the Hubble time. The probability would not be high for Gaia BHs already discovered and to be discovered in the near future. Nevertheless, we have shown the BH/BBH mass, visible star mass, and eccentricity distributions of Gaia BHs and Gaia BBHs, which will be helpful for follow-up observations to discover Gaia BBHs. A Gaia BH would be more likely to be a Gaia BBH if it has younger age, longer period, lower-mass companion, more circular orbit, lower metallicity, and more massive BH. Our results have implied that Gaia BH3 is unlikely to be a Gaia BBH.
Tanikawa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.