Two almost planetary mass survivors of common envelope evolution
Abstract
White dwarfs are often found in close binaries with stellar or even substellar companions. It is generally thought that these compact binaries form via common envelope evolution, triggered by the progenitor of the white dwarf expanding after it evolved off the main-sequence and engulfing its companion. To date, a handful of white dwarfs in compact binaries with substellar companions have been found, typically with masses greater than around 50 M. Here we report the discovery of two eclipsing white dwarf plus brown dwarf binaries containing very low mass brown dwarfs. ZTF J1828+2308 consists of a hot ( K) M white dwarf in a 2.7 hour binary with a M ( M) brown dwarf. ZTF J12302655 contains a cool ( K) M white dwarf in a 5.7 hour binary with a companion that has a mass of less than 0.0211 M (22.1 M). While the brown dwarf in ZTF J1828+2308 has a radius consistent with its mass and age, ZTF J12302655 contains a roughly 20 per cent overinflated brown dwarf for its age. We are only able to reconstruct the common envelope phase for either system if it occurred after the first thermal pulse, when the white dwarf progenitor had already lost a significant fraction of its original mass. This is true even for very high common envelope ejection efficiencies (), unless both systems have extremely low metallicities. It may be that the lowest mass companions can only survive a common envelope phase if it occurs at this very late stage.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.14333,
title = {Two almost planetary mass survivors of common envelope evolution},
author = {S. G. Parsons and A. J. Brown and S. L. Casewell and S. P. Littlefair and J. van Roestel and A. Rebassa-Mansergas and R. Murillo-Ojeda and M. A. Hollands and M. Zorotovic and N. Castro Segura and V. S. Dhillon and M. J. Dyer and J. A. Garbutt and M. J. Green and D. Jarvis and M. R. Kennedy and P. Kerry and J. McCormac and J. Munday and I. Pelisoli and E. Pike and D. I. Sahman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.14333},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
15 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS