We report the discovery of an extremely close, eclipsing binary system. A white dwarf is orbited by a core He-burning compact hot subdwarf star with a period as short as ≃0.04987d making this system the most compact hot subdwarf binary discovered so far. The subdwarf will start to transfer helium-rich material on short timescales of less than 50Myr. The ignition of He-burning at the surface may trigger carbon-burning in the core although the WD is less massive than the Chandrasekhar limit (>0.74M⊙) making this binary a possible progenitor candidate for a supernova type Ia event.
@article{arxiv.1209.4740,
title = {Discovery of the closest hot subdwarf binary with white dwarf companion},
author = {S. Geier and T. R. Marsh and B. H. Dunlap and B. N. Barlow and V. Schaffenroth and E. Ziegerer and U. Heber and T. Kupfer and P. F. L. Maxted and B. Miszalski and A. Shporer and J. H. Telting and R. H. Oestensen and S. J. O'Toole and B. T. Gaensicke and R. Napiwotzki},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.4740},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
6 pages, 2 figures, to be published in the proceedings of 18th European White Dwarf Workshop, Krakow, Poland, ASP Conf. Ser