Rapid orbital decay in detached binaries: evidence for circumbinary disks

Abstract

Some short-period, detached binary systems have recently been reported to experience very rapid orbital decay, much faster than is expected from the angular-momentum loss caused by gravitational radiation alone. As these systems contain fully convective stars, magnetic braking is not believed to be operative, making the large orbital-period derivative puzzling. Here we explore whether a resonant interaction between the binary and a surrounding circumbinary (CB) disk could account for the observed orbital decay. Our calculations indicate that the observed orbital-period derivatives in seven detached binaries can be produced by the resonant interaction between the binary and a CB disk if the latter has a mass in the range of $10^{-4}-10^{-2}{M}_{\odot }$, which is of the same order as the inferred disk mass ($\sim 2.4\times 10^{-4}{M}_{\odot }$) in the post-common-envelope binary NN Ser.

5 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (11)

• Three Dimensional MHD Simulation of Circumbinary Accretion Disks -2. Net Accretion Rate
• Post Common Envelope Binaries from SDSS. V: Four eclipsing white dwarf main sequence binaries
• On the formation of eccentric millisecond pulsars with helium white-dwarf companions
• Hunting high and low: XMM monitoring of the eclipsing polar HU Aquarii
• Evolving to type Ia supernovae with long delay time
• Orbital Evolution of Algol Binaries with a Circumbinary Disk
• Dust-grain processing in circumbinary discs around evolved binaries. The RV Tauri spectral twins RU Cen and AC Her
• Discovery of the Partially Eclipsing White Dwarf Binary SDSS J143547.87+373338.5
• A study of the evolution of the accretion disk of V2051 Oph through two outburst cycles
• An Halpha-selected sample of cataclysmic variables -- II. Implications for CV evolution
• Can angular momentum loss cause the period change of NN Ser?

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Accretion Disk Assembly During Common Envelope Evolution: Implications for Feedback and LIGO Binary Black Hole Formation
• Energizing the last phase of common envelope removal
• Detection of two additional circumbinary planets around Kepler-451
• Simulating the negative jet feedback mechanism in common envelope jets supernovae
• Investigation on the Orbital Period Variations of NN Ser: Implications for the Hypothetical Planets, the Applegate Mechanism and the Orbital Stability
• Variable jets at the termination of the common envelope evolution
• Formation of Sco X-1 induced by anomalous magnetic braking of Ap/Bp stars
• Scale-invariance of black hole accretion: modeling emission from a black hole X-ray binary with relativistic accretion flow simulations