English

The ELM Survey. VIII. 98 Double White Dwarf Binaries

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2020-02-12 v1

Abstract

We present the final sample of 98 detached double white dwarf (WD) binaries found in the Extremely Low Mass (ELM) Survey, a spectroscopic survey targeting <0.3 Msun He-core WDs completed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey footprint. Over the course of the survey we observed ancillary low mass WD candidates like GD278, which we show is a P=0.19 d double WD binary, as well as candidates that turn out to be field blue straggler/subdwarf A-type stars with luminosities too large to be WDs given their Gaia parallaxes. Here, we define a clean sample of ELM WDs that is complete within our target selection and magnitude range 15<g_0<20 mag. The measurements are consistent with 100% of ELM WDs being 0.0089 < P < 1.5 d double WD binaries, 35% of which belong to the Galactic halo. We infer these are mostly He+CO WD binaries given the measurement constraints. The merger rate of the observed He+CO WD binaries exceeds the formation rate of stable mass transfer AM CVn binaries by a factor of 25, and so the majority of He+CO WD binaries must experience unstable mass transfer and merge. The shortest-period systems like J0651+2844 are signature {\it LISA} verification binaries that can be studied with gravitational waves and light.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.00064,
  title  = {The ELM Survey. VIII. 98 Double White Dwarf Binaries},
  author = {Warren R. Brown and Mukremin Kilic and Alekzander Kosakowski and Jeff J. Andrews and Craig O. Heinke and Marcel A. Agueros and Fernando Camilo and A. Gianninas and J. J. Hermes and Scott J. Kenyon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.00064},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

22 pages, ApJ accepted

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:27:15.380Z