Littlefair, S. P., Dhillon, V. S., Marsh, T. R., Gänsicke, B. T. (Boris T.), Southworth, J. (John) and Watson, C. A.. (2006) A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary. SCIENCE, 314 (5805). pp. 1578-1580. ISSN 0036-8075

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Abstract

A long-standing and unverified prediction of binary star evolution theory is the existence of a population of white dwarfs accreting from substellar donor stars. Such systems ought to be common, but the difficulty of finding them, combined with the challenge of detecting the donor against the light from accretion, means that no donor star to date has a measured mass below the hydrogen burning limit. We applied a technique that allowed us to reliably measure the mass of the unseen donor star in eclipsing systems. We were able to identify a brown dwarf donor star, with a mass of 0.052 +/- 0.002 solar mass. The relatively high mass of the donor star for its orbital period suggests that current evolutionary models may underestimate the radii of brown dwarfs.

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Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	Q Science
Journal or Publication Title:	SCIENCE
Publisher:	AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
ISSN:	0036-8075
Date:	8 December 2006
Volume:	314
Number:	5805
Number of Pages:	3
Page Range:	pp. 1578-1580
Identification Number:	10.1126/science.1133333
Publication Status:	Published
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/32747

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