A 62-minute orbital period black widow binary in a wide hierarchical triple
Abstract
Over a dozen millisecond pulsars are ablating low-mass companions in close binary systems. In the original "black widow", the 8-hour orbital period eclipsing pulsar PSR J1959+2048 (PSR B1957+20), high energy emission originating from the pulsar is irradiating and may eventually destroy a low-mass companion. These systems are not only physical laboratories that reveal the dramatic result of exposing a close companion star to the relativistic energy output of a pulsar, but are also believed to harbour some of the most massive neutron stars, allowing for robust tests of the neutron star equation of state. Here, we report observations of ZTF J1406+1222, a wide hierarchical triple hosting a 62-minute orbital period black widow candidate whose optical flux varies by a factor of more than 10. ZTF J1406+1222 pushes the boundaries of evolutionary models, falling below the 80 minute minimum orbital period of hydrogen-rich systems. The wide tertiary companion is a rare low metallicity cool subdwarf star, and the system has a Galactic halo orbit consistent with passing near the Galactic center, making it a probe of formation channels, neutron star kick physics, and binary evolution.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.02278,
title = {A 62-minute orbital period black widow binary in a wide hierarchical triple},
author = {Kevin B. Burdge and Thomas R. Marsh and Jim Fuller and Eric C. Bellm and Ilaria Caiazzo and Deepto Chakrabarty and Michael W. Coughlin and Kishalay De and V. S. Dhillon and Matthew J. Graham and Pablo Rodrí guez-Gil and Amruta D. Jaodand and David L. Kaplan and Erin Kara and Albert K. H. Kong and S. R. Kulkarni and Kwan-Lok Li and S. P. Littlefair and Walid A. Majid and Przemek Mróz and Aaron B. Pearlman and E. S. Phinney and Jan van Roestel and Robert A. Simcoe and Igor Andreoni and Andrew J. Drake and Richard G. Dekany and Dmitry A. Duev and Erik C. Kool and Ashish A. Mahabal and Michael S. Medford and Reed Riddle and Thomas A. Prince},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.02278},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
63 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, published in Nature on May 4, 2022