A Be star-black hole binary with a wide orbit from LAMOST time-domain survey
Abstract
Binary systems consisting of an early type star and a black hole (BH) are crucial for understanding various astrophysical phenomena, particularly the origins of detected gravitational wave sources. Be binary systems are expected to represent a key evolutionary stage in hosting BHs. However, while hundreds of Be X-ray binaries are known, the only confirmed BH candidate in a Be binary remains highly controversial. We report the discovery of ALS 8814, a Be star-BH binary with a moderately eccentric () and wide orbit ( days), revealed by the radial velocity (RV) measurement of the visible Be star. Our analysis, combining flux-calibrated spectra in the Balmer discontinuity region and spectral template matching, yields a mass of for the Be star. The minimum mass of the unseen companion, assuming an edge-on inclination (), is . We rule out the presence of non-degenerate companions in ALS 8814, indicating that it can only be a BH. This discovery represents a robust case of a Be-BH binary, identified purely through precise RV measurements from a single set of lines. The extremely low peculiar velocity of ALS 8814 suggests that the BH is formed via a direct core-collapse with a negligible natal kick, implying an almost perfect alignment between the Be star's spin and the orbital plane. In this context, the binary's inclination angle is estimated to be 22-49 by analyzing the shallow double-peaked profile of the H emission line. This inclination range corresponds to a BH mass estimate between and . As the only unambiguous Be-BH binary system known to date, ALS 8814 provides valuable constraints on the BH formation in a binary system with a high-mass companion.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.23151,
title = {A Be star-black hole binary with a wide orbit from LAMOST time-domain survey},
author = {Qian-Yu An and Yang Huang and Wei-Min Gu and Yong Shao and Zhi-Xiang Zhang and Tuan Yi and B. D. Lailey and T. A. A. Sigut and Kyle Akira Rocha and Meng Sun and Seth Gossage and Shi-Jie Gao and Shan-Shan Weng and Song Wang and Bowen Zhang and Xinlin Zhao and Senyu Qi and Shilong Liao and Jianghui Ji and Junfeng Wang and Jianfeng Wu and Mouyuan Sun and Xiang-Dong Li and Jifeng Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.23151},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
76 pages, 29 figures, to be submitted