Discovery of WD+M Binaries in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Details Discovery of WD+M Binaries in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Discovery of WD+M Binaries in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...20916219d&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #162.19; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Type Ia supernovae provide the evidence for the current greatest scientific puzzle, the accelerating expansion of the universe. To better understand this phenomenon it is important to understand the basis for that discovery; the progenitors of these supernovae.
Type Ia supernovae are thought to occur when a white dwarf (WD) reaches the Chandrasekhar limit of approximately 1.44 times the mass of our sun. This can occur when two WDs in a binary system eventually merge due to the loss of rotational energy in the form of gravitational waves. WDs in a binary system can also exceed this limit when the WD accretes enough mass from its companion due to its strong gravitational and magnetic forces.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observed approximately 1.2 million objects among which were 9822 that the pipeline designated as WDs. For all objects in the SDSS, multiple exposures were taken that were then co-added to create a higher signal-to-noise composite spectrum. The time between these exposures varied between 15 minutes to several days. Every object has at least 3 of these exposures. While these exposures are often neglected in favor of their higher signal-to-noise co-added spectra, I set out to examine the differences in the spectra of these individual exposures to determine if there were any radial velocity shifts between these exposures. I chose to first examine WDs since they have the capability of being in very short period binary systems that may be Type Ia Supernova progenitors.
This paper presents 2 WD+M binaries (in plate-fiber-mjd format: 2232-584-53827 and 2075-144-53737) as well as a method to determine if a large number of objects in the SDSS database are in short period binary systems.
I would like to thank and acknowledge Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for their funding and support.

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