The past and future evolution of the unique double white dwarf binary SDSS1257+5428

Details The past and future evolution of the unique double white dwarf binary SDSS1257+5428 The past and future evolution of the unique double white dwarf binary SDSS1257+5428

Jul 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009hst..prop12175m&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #12175. Cycle 18

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The past 15 years has seen the unmasking of a vast population of close double white dwarfs {DWDs} with over 100 million in our Galaxy alone. So numerous are DWDs that they may themselves be the progenitors of significant populations such as accreting ultra-compact binary stars, isolated millisecond pulsars, hot subdwarfs and Type Ia supernovae. They are also expected to be the dominant sources for space-based gravitational wave astronomy. We have discovered a unique DWD, SDSS1257+5428, composed of two white dwarfs with masses of 0.2 and > 1 Msun, from the low and high-mass extremes of the white dwarf mass distribution. The high mass white dwarf is rapidly rotating, suggestive of accretion-induced spin-up, and yet in current models of the evoluton of such systems in which the low mass white dwarf should have emerged from a common envelope phase, there could not have been time for such spin-up to have occurred. Our current knowledge of the system, particularly the fainter high mass white dwarf, is limited by the blending of the two spectra at optical wavelengths. We don't know for instance whether or not the total system mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar mass. We will acquire ultraviolet spectra of SDSS1257+5428 which will pin down the masses and temperatures of the compoanent white dwarfs to define the past and future evolution of this puzzling system.;

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