A New Class of Roche Lobe–filling Hot Subdwarf Binaries
Thomas Kupfer, Evan B. Bauer, Kevin B. Burdge, Jan van Roestel, Eric C. Bellm, Jim Fuller, JJ Hermes, Thomas R. Marsh, Lars Bildsten, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, E. S. Phinney, Thomas A. Prince, Paula Szkody, Yuhan Yao, Andreas Irrgang, Ulrich Heber, David Schneider, Vik S. Dhillon, Gabriel Murawski, Andrew J. Drake, Dmitry A. Duev, Michael Feeney, Matthew J. Graham, Russ R. Laher, S. P. Littlefair, A. A. Mahabal, Frank J. Masci, Michael Porter, Dan Reiley, Hector Rodriguez, Ben Rusholme, David L. Shupe, Maayane T. Soumagnac
Abstract
Abstract We present the discovery of the second binary with a Roche lobe–filling hot subdwarf transferring mass to a white dwarf (WD) companion. This 56 minute binary was discovered using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility. Spectroscopic observations reveal an He-sdOB star with an effective temperature of T eff = 33,700 ± 1000 K and a surface gravity of log( g ) = 5.54 ± 0.11. The GTC+HiPERCAM light curve is dominated by the ellipsoidal deformation of the He-sdOB star and shows an eclipse of the He-sdOB by an accretion disk as well as a weak eclipse of the WD. We infer a He-sdOB mass of M sdOB = 0.41 ± 0.04 M ⊙ and a WD mass of M WD = 0.68 ± 0.05 M ⊙ . The weak eclipses imply a WD blackbody temperature of 63,000 ± 10,000 K and a radius R WD = 0.0148 ± 0.0020 R ⊙ as expected for a WD of such high temperature. The He-sdOB star is likely undergoing hydrogen shell burning and will continue transferring mass for ≈1 Myr at a rate of 10 −9 M ⊙ yr −1 , which is consistent with the high WD temperature. The hot subdwarf will then turn into a WD and the system will merge in ≈30 Myr. We suggest that Galactic reddening could bias discoveries toward preferentially finding Roche lobe–filling systems during the short-lived shell-burning phase. Studies using reddening-corrected samples should reveal a large population of helium core–burning hot subdwarfs with T eff ≈ 25,000 K in binaries of 60–90 minutes with WDs. Though not yet in contact, these binaries would eventually come into contact through gravitational-wave emission and explode as a subluminous thermonuclear supernova or evolve into a massive single WD.