Sloan Low-Mass Wide Pairs of Kinematically Equivalent Stars (SLoWPoKES):
  A Catalog of Very Wide, Low-mass Pairs
  We present the Sloan Low-mass Wide Pairs of Kinematically Equivalent Stars
(SLoWPoKES), a catalog of 1342 very-wide (projected separation >500 AU),
low-mass (at least one mid-K--mid-M dwarf component) common proper motion pairs
identified from astrometry, photometry, and proper motions in the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey. A Monte Carlo based Galactic model is constructed to assess the
probability of chance alignment for each pair; only pairs with a probability of
chance alignment </= 0.05 are included in the catalog. The overall fidelity of
the catalog is expected to be 98.35%. The selection algorithm is purposely
exclusive to ensure that the resulting catalog is efficient for follow-up
studies of low-mass pairs. The SLoWPoKES catalog is the largest sample of wide,
low-mass pairs to date and is intended as an ongoing community resource for
detailed study of bona fide systems. Here we summarize the general
characteristics of the SLoWPoKES sample and present preliminary results
describing the properties of wide, low-mass pairs. While the majority of the
identified pairs are disk dwarfs, there are 70 halo subdwarf pairs and 21 white
dwarf-disk dwarf pairs, as well as four triples. Most SLoWPoKES pairs violate
the previously defined empirical limits for maximum angular separation or
binding energies. However, they are well within the theoretical limits and
should prove very useful in putting firm constraints on the maximum size of
binary systems and on different formation scenarios. We find a lower limit to
the wide binary frequency for the mid-K-mid-M spectral types that constitute
our sample to be 1.1%. This frequency decreases as a function of Galactic
height, indicating a time evolution of the wide binary frequency. [See text for
full abstract.]
