English

A second candidate magnetic helium core white dwarf and 3 other variable white dwarfs in the globular cluster NGC 6397

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2024-12-18 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Using archival Hubble Space Telescope observations, we report the discovery of four variable low-mass white dwarfs (0.18MM0.5M0.18 \, M_\odot \leq M \leq 0.5 \,M_\odot) in the globular cluster NGC 6397. One source exhibits a periodic optical modulation of 5.21±0.025.21 \pm 0.02 hours, which we interpret as potentially due to the rotation of a magnetic helium core WD (He WD). This makes this candidate the second magnetic He WD in NGC 6397, and one of the few He WDs with a measured rotation period. The other three candidates show aperiodic variability, with a change in magnitude ranging from 0.110.6\sim 0.11-0.6. These discoveries highlight the importance of high-cadence photometric surveys in dense stellar environments. Follow-up spectroscopic observations are needed to confirm the nature of the variability of these systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.12375,
  title  = {A second candidate magnetic helium core white dwarf and 3 other variable white dwarfs in the globular cluster NGC 6397},
  author = {Manuel Pichardo Marcano and Liliana E. Rivera Sandoval and Thomas J. Maccarone and Rene D. Rohrmann and Leandro G. Althaus and Craig O. Heinke and Diogo Belloni and Arash Bahramian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.12375},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJ