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Constraining Low-Mass White Dwarf Binaries from Ellipsoidal Variations

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arxiv 1809.05623 v1 pith:FSLTSUCW submitted 2018-09-15 astro-ph.SR astro-ph.IM

classification astro-ph.SRastro-ph.IM
keywords ellipsoidalvariationsbinarieswhitebinaryconstraintsdwarfhermes
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Stars are stretched by tidal interactions in tight binaries, and changes to their projected areas introduce photometric variations twice per orbit. Hermes et al. (2014, ApJ, 792, 39) utilized measurements of these ellipsoidal variations to constrain the radii of low-mass white dwarfs in eight single-lined spectroscopic binaries. We refine this method here, using Monte Carlo simulations to improve constraints on many orbital and stellar properties of binary systems that exhibit ellipsoidal variations. We analyze the recently discovered tidally distorted white dwarf binary system SDSS J1054-2121 in detail, and also revisit the Hermes et al. (2014) sample. Disagreements in some cases between the observations, ellipsoidal variation model, and Gaia radius constraints suggest that extrinsic errors are present, likely in the surface gravities determined through model atmosphere fits to stellar spectra.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Searching for new variable white dwarfs: The discovery of the three new pulsating and three new binary systems

    astro-ph.SR 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    High-speed photometry of 16 candidate white dwarfs revealed three new pulsating white dwarfs (one ELM, one low-mass, one ZZ Ceti) and three new binary systems with ellipsoidal or reflection variability.

  2. A Search for Radio Millisecond Pulsar Companions around Extremely Low-mass White Dwarfs with Ellipsoidal Variability

    astro-ph.SR 2024-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A ZTF-based search finds 23 ellipsoidal ELM WD binaries (17 new), and radio non-detections of 11 systems put the fraction with millisecond pulsar companions below about 15%.

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