Low Mass Companions to White Dwarfs
Abstract
This paper summarizes the results of over 17 years of work searching for low mass stellar and substellar companions to more than 370 nearby white dwarfs. Roughly 60 low mass, unevolved companions were found and studied all together, with over 20 discovered in the last few years, including the first unambiguous brown dwarf companion to a white dwarf, GD 1400B. The resulting spectral type distributions for companions to white dwarfs and nearby cool field dwarfs are compared, and the implications for binary star formation are discussed. A brief analysis of GD 1400B, including new data, is also presented
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0509165,
title = {Low Mass Companions to White Dwarfs},
author = {J. Farihi and B. Zuckerman and E. E. Becklin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0509165},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages with figures, accepted as part of a special issue of AN dedicated to the proceedings of the workshop "Ultralow Mass Star Formation and Evolution" held in La Palma, Spain during June/July 2005