The Discovery of a Companion to the Lowest Mass White Dwarf

Details The Discovery of a Companion to the Lowest Mass White Dwarf The Discovery of a Companion to the Lowest Mass White Dwarf

2007-04-13

arxiv.org/abs/0704.1813v1

Astrophys.J.664:1088-1092,2007

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

ApJ, in press. See the Press Release at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/2007/pr200708.html

Scientific paper

10.1086/518735

We report the detection of a radial velocity companion to SDSS J091709.55+463821.8, the lowest mass white dwarf currently known with M~0.17Msun. The radial velocity of the white dwarf shows variations with a semi-amplitude of 148.8 km/s and a period of 7.5936 hours, which implies a companion mass of M > 0.28Msun. The lack of evidence of a companion in the optical photometry forces any main-sequence companion to be smaller than 0.1Msun, hence a low mass main sequence star companion is ruled out for this system. The companion is most likely another white dwarf, and we present tentative evidence for an evolutionary scenario which could have produced it. However, a neutron star companion cannot be ruled out and follow-up radio observations are required to search for a pulsar companion.

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