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Two almost planetary mass survivors of common envelope evolution

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posted on 2025-03-13, 16:21 authored by SG Parsons, AJ Brown, Sarah CasewellSarah Casewell, SP Littlefair, J van Roestel, A Rebassa-Mansergas, R Murillo-Ojeda, MA Hollands, M Zorotovic, N Castro Segura, VS Dhillon, MJ Dyer, JA Garbutt, MJ Green, D Jarvis, MR Kennedy, P Kerry, J McCormac, J Munday, I Pelisoli, E Pike, DI Sahman

White dwarfs are often found in close binaries with stellar or even substellar companions. It is generally thought that these compact binaries form via common envelope evolution, triggered by the progenitor of the white dwarf expanding after it evolved off the main sequence and engulfing its companion. To date, a handful of white dwarfs in compact binaries with substellar companions have been found, typically with masses greater than around 50 MJup. Here, we report the discovery of two eclipsing white dwarf plus brown dwarf binaries containing very low mass brown dwarfs. ZTF J1828+2308 consists of a hot ($15900\pm 75$ K) $0.610\pm 0.004$ ${\rm M}_{\odot }$ white dwarf in a 2.7 h binary with a $0.0186\pm 0.0008$ ${\rm M}_{\odot }$ ($19.5\pm 0.8$ MJup) brown dwarf. ZTF J1230−2655 contains a cool ($10000\pm 110$ K) $0.65\pm 0.02$ ${\rm M}_{\odot }$ white dwarf in a 5.7 h binary with a companion that has a mass of less than 0.0211 ${\rm M}_{\odot }$ (22.1 MJup). While the brown dwarf in ZTF J1828+2308 has a radius consistent with its mass and age, ZTF J1230−2655 contains a roughly 20 per cent overinflated brown dwarf for its age. We are only able to reconstruct the common envelope phase for either system if it occurred after the first thermal pulse, when the white dwarf progenitor had already lost a significant fraction of its original mass. This is true even for very high common envelope ejection efficiencies ($\alpha _\mathrm{CE}\sim 1$), unless both systems have extremely low metallicities. It may be that the lowest mass companions can only survive a common envelope phase if it occurs at this very late stage.

Funding

Science and Technology Facilities Council (grant ST/Z000033/1)

Spanish MINECO grant PID2020-117252GB-I00 and by the AGAUR/Generalitat de Catalunya grant SGR-386/2021

INTA through grant PRE-OBSERVATORIO

FONDECYT grant number 1221059

Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF\R1\231496)

History

Author affiliation

College of Science & Engineering Physics & Astronomy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Volume

537

Issue

2

Pagination

2112 - 2126

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

issn

0035-8711

eissn

1365-2966

Copyright date

2025

Available date

2025-03-13

Language

en

Deposited by

Dr Sarah Casewell

Deposit date

2025-02-21

Data Access Statement

Raw and reduced X-shooter data are available through the ESO archive. Raw and reduced HiPERCAM data are available through the GTC public archive. Raw and reduced ULTRACAM data will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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