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Fate of very low-mass secondaries in accreting binaries and the 1.5-ms pulsar

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Abstract

Families of old tight low-mass binaries in which mass transfer to a heavier collapsed primary from a lighter secondary is an essential evolutionary feature include the galactic bulge X-ray sources, in which the primary is a neutron star. Canonical theories for the evolution of such binaries assume that the mass transfer and secondary evolution are always stable. We argue here that the stability postulate may fail if the secondary mass falls below ∼2×10−2 M⊙. The secondary may then be almost entirely tidally disrupted, leaving behind, at most, a small remnant very much lighter than the Earth in an orbit with a period of several hours. In binary accretion scenarios for the origin of the millisecond pulsar PSR1937 + 2141, this could explain the absence of any detected binary companion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, New York, 10027, USA

    Malvin A. Ruderman & Jacob Shaham

  2. Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Jacob Shaham

Authors
  1. Malvin A. Ruderman
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  2. Jacob Shaham
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Ruderman, M., Shaham, J. Fate of very low-mass secondaries in accreting binaries and the 1.5-ms pulsar. Nature 304, 425–427 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/304425a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/304425a0

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