Related papers: Gamma Cas Stars as Be + White Dwarf Binary Systems
Masses are one of the most difficult stellar properties to measure. In the case of the white-dwarf companions of Barium stars, the situation is worse. These stars are dim, cool, and difficult to observe via direct methods. However, Ba stars…
The analogues of $\gamma$ Cassiopea are binary early type Be stars which are X-ray bright with hard thermal spectra. The nature of companions in these stars and mechanisms of their X-ray emission remain enigmatic. Among the proposed ideas…
It has been proposed that accretion-induced collapse (AIC) of massive white dwarfs (WDs) is an indispensable path for the formation of neutron star (NS) binaries. Although there are still no direct evidence for the existence of AIC events,…
Barium (Ba) dwarfs and CH subgiants are the less-evolved analogues of Ba and CH giants. They are F- to G-type main-sequence stars polluted with heavy elements by a binary companion when the latter was on the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB).…
The third data release of Gaia introduced a large catalog of astrometric binaries, out of which about 3,200 are likely main-sequence stars with a white-dwarf (WD) companion. These binaries are typically found with orbital separations of ~1…
We have used the WGACAT to search for hard X-ray sources associated with white dwarfs (WDs) from the catalog of McCook & Sion (1999). We find 17 X-ray sources coincident with WDs showing significant hard X-ray emission at energies >0.5 keV.…
Thanks to the high sensitivity of the instruments on board the XMM-Newton and Chandra satellites, it has become possible to explore the properties of the X-ray emission from hot subdwarfs. The small but growing sample of hot subdwarfs…
White dwarfs with a F, G or K type companion represent the last common ancestor for a plethora of exotic systems throughout the galaxy, though to this point very few of them have been fully characterised in terms of orbital period and…
White dwarf symbiotic binaries are detected in X-rays with luminosities in the range of 10$^{30}$ to 10$^{34}$ lumcgs. Their X-ray emission arises either from the accretion disk boundary layer, from a region where the winds from both…
\gamma Cas is the prototypical classical Be star and is best known for its variable hard X-ray emission. To elucidate the reasons for this emission, we mounted a multiwavelength campaign in 2010 centered around 4 XMM observations. The…
We have measured the orbital parameters of seven close binaries, including six new objects, in a radial velocity survey of 38 objects comprising a hot subdwarf star with orbital periods ranging from ~0.17 to 3 d. One new system, GALEX…
Gaia DR3 mission has identified and provided about 440,000 binary systems with orbital solutions, offering a valuable resource for searching binaries including a compact component. By combining the Gaia DR3 data with radial velocities (RVs)…
Massive B and Be stars produce X-rays from shocks in high velocity winds with temperatures of a few million degrees and maximum X-ray luminosities of $\approx$ 10$^{31}$ erg/s. Surprisingly, a sub-group of early Be stars exhibits > 20 times…
It has been suggested that most Be/X-ray binaries are low X-ray luminosity nearby objects, containing white dwarfs (Chevalier & Ilovaisky 1998). We show that existing evidence indicates that all known Be/X-ray binaries are relatively bright…
An analysis of accurate radial velocities (RVs) of the Be star gamma Cas from 295 Reticon spectrograms secured between October 1993 and May 2000 allowed us to prewhiten the RVs for the long-term changes and to obtain the first orbital RV…
Subluminous B (sdB) stars can result from stable Roche lobe overflow or common envelope ejection in close binary systems. The companions are either low mass main sequence stars or white dwarfs. We discuss mass determinations for sdB stars…
A growing number of early Be stars exhibit unusually hard X-ray spectra and luminosities intermediate between those typical of early type stars and those emitted by most Be/X-ray binaries in quiescence. We report on XMM-Newton and optical…
The theory of binary evolution predicts that many massive stars should lose their hydrogen-rich envelopes via interaction with a companion -- revealing hot helium stars with masses of $\sim$2--8M$_{\odot}$. However, only one candidate…
The evolution of helium stars with masses of 1.5 - 6.7 M_sun in binary systems with a 1.4 M_sun neutron-star companion is presented. Such systems are assumed to be the remnants of Be/X-ray binaries with B-star masses in the range of 8 - 20…
We introduce the first results from an ongoing, systematic survey for new symbiotic stars selected from the AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS H$\alpha$ Survey (SHS). The survey aims to identify and characterise the fainter population of symbiotic stars…