The Hydrogen Burning Turn-off of RS Ophiuchi 2006
Abstract
We report a coordinated multi-band photometry of the RS Oph 2006 outburst and highlight the emission line free y-band photometry that shows a mid-plateau phase at y ~ 10.2 mag from day 40 to day 75 after the discovery followed by a sharp drop of the final decline. Such mid-plateau phases are observed in other two recurrent novae, U Sco and CI Aql, and are interpreted as a bright disk irradiated by the white dwarf. We have calculated theoretical light curves based on the optically thick wind theory and have reproduced the observed light curves including the mid-plateau phase and the final sharp decline. This final decline is identified with the end of steady hydrogen shell-burning, which turned out the day ~80. This turnoff date is consistent with the end of a supersoft X-ray phase observed with Swift. Our model suggests a white dwarf mass of 1.35 \pm 0.01 M_\sun, which indicates that RS Oph is a progenitor of Type Ia supernovae. We strongly recommend the y-filter observation of novae to detect both the presence of a disk and the hydrogen burning turn-off.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0607650,
title = {The Hydrogen Burning Turn-off of RS Ophiuchi 2006},
author = {Izumi Hachisu and Mariko Kato and Seiichiro Kiyota and Katsuaki Kubotera and Hiroyuki Maehara and Kazuhiro Nakajima and Yuko Ishii and Mari Kamada and Sahori Mizoguchi and Shinji Nishiyama and Naoko Sumitomo and Ken'ichi Tanaka and Masayuki Yamanaka and Kozo Sadakane},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0607650},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
to appear in ApJL, 4 pages including 4 figures