English

Signs of accretion in the white dwarf + brown dwarf binary NLTT5306

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2019-01-23 v1

Abstract

We present new XSHOOTER spectra of NLTT5306, a 0.44 ±\pm 0.04\msun white dwarf in a short period (101\,min) binary system with a brown dwarf companion that is likely to have previously undergone common envelope evolution. We have confirmed the presence of Hα\alpha emission and discovered Na I absorption associated with the white dwarf. These observations are indicative of accretion. Accretion is typically evidenced by high energy emission in the UV and X-ray regime. However our \textit{Swift} observations covering the full orbital period in three wavebands (uvw1, uvm2, uvw2) revealed no UV excess or modulation. We used the X-ray non-detection to put an upper limit on the accretion rate of 2×\times1015^{-15}\msun yr1^{-1}. We compare NLTT5306 to similar accreting binaries with brown dwarf donors and suggest the inferred accretion rate could be from wind accretion or accretion from a debris/dust disk. The lack of evidence for a disk implies NLTT5306 is magnetically funnelling a weak wind from a potentially low gravity brown dwarf. The upper limit on the accretion rate suggests a magnetic field as low as 0.45\,kG would be sufficient to achieve this. If confirmed this would constitute the first detection of a brown dwarf wind and could provide useful constraints on mass loss rates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.05485,
  title  = {Signs of accretion in the white dwarf + brown dwarf binary NLTT5306},
  author = {E. S. Longstaff and S. L. Casewell and G. A. Wynn and K. L. Page and P. K. G. Williams and I. Braker and P. F. L. Maxted},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.05485},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures