Pulse Timing Discovery of a Three-Day Companion to the Hot Subdwarf BPM 36430 [SSA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2209.09909


Hot subdwarf B stars are core-helium burning objects that have undergone envelope stripping, likely by a binary companion. Using high-speed photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, we have discovered the hot subdwarf BPM 36430 is a hybrid sdBV_rs pulsator exhibiting several low-amplitude g-modes and a strong p-mode pulsation. The latter shows a clear, periodic variation in its pulse arrival times. Fits to this phase oscillation imply BPM 36430 orbits a barycenter approximately 10 light-seconds away once every 3.1 d. Using the CHIRON echelle spectrograph on the CTIO 1.5-m telescope, we confirm the reflex motion by detecting a radial velocity variation with semi-amplitude, period, and phase in agreement with the pulse timings. We conclude that a white dwarf companion with minimum mass of 0.42 Msun orbits BPM 36430. Our study represents only the second time a companion orbiting a pulsating hot subdwarf or white dwarf has been detected from pulse timings and confirmed with radial velocities.

Read this paper on arXiv…

B. Smith, B. Barlow, B. Rosenthal, et. al.
Thu, 22 Sep 22
19/65

Comments: 7 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal