论文标题
限制大规模二进制进化中的过度接触阶段-II。已知的O+O过度关键系统的周期稳定性
Constraining the overcontact phase in massive binary evolution -- II. Period stability of known O+O overcontact systems
论文作者
论文摘要
鉴于经常援引合并来解释大量恒星进化中的许多外来现象,因此了解直接在合并之前的进化阶段,即过度结合阶段,至关重要。尽管它很重要,但在我们对大规模过度接触二进制的演变的理解中仍然存在很大的不确定性。我们旨在通过测量六个此类对象的样本的周期变化的速率来提供强大的观察性约束,以对大规模超接触系统的未来动态演变。此外,我们旨在研究像理论模型预测的那样,不等质量系统的周期是否比其相等的质量对应物显示出更高的变化率。使用来自覆盖大约40年的各种地面和空间任务的档案光度数据,我们在几个较小的时间跨度上测量每个系统的周期。然后,我们在测得的周期中拟合线性回归,以确定整个数据集对周期变化的速率。我们发现样本中的所有恒星都有很小的变化,并且似乎与质量比没有相关性。这意味着这些系统的轨道周期在核时尺度上是稳定的,并且不平等的质量系统可能不会像预期的那样均等。将我们的结果与人口合成分布进行比较时,我们发现预期质量比和周期稳定性之间存在很大差异。我们发现,可以通过删除初始时间较短的系统来缓解这些差异,这表明观察到的过度接触系统的样本可能源自具有较长初始轨道时期的二进制系统。
Given that mergers are often invoked to explain many exotic phenomena in massive star evolution, understanding the evolutionary phase directly preceding a merger, the overcontact phase, is of crucial importance. Despite its importance, large uncertainties exist in our understanding of the evolution of massive overcontact binaries. We aim to provide robust observational constraints on the future dynamical evolution of massive overcontact systems by measuring the rate at which the periods change for a sample of six such objects. Furthermore, we aim to investigate whether the periods of unequal mass systems show higher rates of change than their equal mass counterparts as theoretical models predict. Using archival photometric data from various ground- and space-based missions covering up to ~40 years, we measure the periods of each system over several smaller time spans. We then fit a linear regression through the measured periods to determine the rate at which the period is changing over the entire data set. We find that all of the stars in our sample have very small period changes and that there does not seem to be a correlation with the mass ratio. This implies that the orbital periods for these systems are stable on the nuclear timescale, and that the unequal mass systems may not equalize as expected. When comparing our results with population synthesis distributions, we find large discrepancies between the expected mass ratios and period stabilities. We find that these discrepancies can be mitigated to a degree by removing systems with shorter initial periods, suggesting that the observed sample of overcontact systems may originate from binary systems with longer initial orbital periods.