Planetary Nebulae: What can they tell us about close binary evolution?

Abstract

It is now clear that a binary pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and the continually increasing sample of known central binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to use these systems to further our understanding of binary evolution. Binary central stars of planetary nebulae are key laboratories in understanding the formation processes of a wide-range of astrophysical phenomena - a point well-illustrated by the fact that the only known double-degenerate, super-Chandrasekhar mass binary which will merge in less than a Hubble time is found inside a planetary nebula. Here, I briefly outline our current understanding and avenues for future investigation.

To appear in the proceedings of "Physics of Evolved Stars 2015 - A conference dedicated to the memory of Olivier Chesneau" http://poe2015.sciencesconf.org/

References in corpus (6)

• Low-Mass Binary Induced Outflows from Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• Binary Planetary Nebulae Nuclei towards the Galactic Bulge. I. Sample Discovery, Period Distribution and Binary Fraction
• Binarity and the abundance discrepancy problem in planetary nebulae
• Chemical abundances for Hf 2-2, a planetary nebula with the strongest known heavy element recombination lines
• The double-degenerate, super-Chandrasekhar nucleus of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428
• The fraction of type Ia supernovae exploding inside planetary nebulae (SNIPs)

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Tatooine's Future: The Eccentric Response of Kepler's Circumbinary Planets to Common-Envelope Evolution of their Host Stars
• The discovery and characterisation of binary central stars in planetary nebulae