Abstract
The current consensus is that at least half of the OB stars are formed in binary or multiple star systems. The evolution of OB stars is greatly influenced by whether the stars begin as close binaries, and the evolution of the binary systems depend on whether the mass transfer is conservative or nonconservative. FUV/NUV spectropolarimetry is poised to answer the latter question. This paper discusses how the Polstar spectropolarimetry mission can characterize the degree of nonconservative mass transfer that occurs at various stages of binary evolution, from the initial mass reversal to the late Algol phase, and quantify its amount. The proposed instrument combines spectroscopic and polarimetric capabilities, where the spectroscopy can resolve Doppler shifts in UV resonance lines with 10 km/s precision, and polarimetry can resolve linear polarization with \(10^{-3}\) precision or better. The spectroscopy will identify absorption by mass streams and other plasmas seen in projection against the stellar disk as a function of orbital phase, as well as scattering from extended splash structures, including jets. The polarimetry tracks the light coming from material not seen against the stellar disk, allowing the geometry of the scattering to be tracked, resolving ambiguities left by the spectroscopy and light-curve information. For example, nonconservative mass streams ejected in the polar direction will produce polarization of the opposite sign from conservative transfer accreting in the orbital plane. Time domain coverage over a range of phases of the binary orbit are well supported by the Polstar observing strategy. Special attention will be given to the epochs of enhanced systemic mass loss that have been identified from IUE observations (pre-mass reversal and tangential gas stream impact). We show how the history of systemic mass and angular momentum loss/gain episodes can be inferred via ensemble evolution through the r–q diagram. Combining the above elements will significantly improve our understanding of the mass transfer process and the amount of mass that can escape from the system, an important channel for changing the final mass and ultimate supernova of a large number of massive stars found in binaries at close enough separation to undergo interaction.
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Data Availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
Materials Availability
This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System and the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. The work has also made use of the BeSS database, operated at LESIA, Observatoire de Meudon, France: http://basebe.obspm.fr. This research made use of Astropy, http://www.astropy.org a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Robitaille et al. 2013; Price-Whelan et al. 2018).
Notes
These systems are often called close binaries.
In contemporary terminology the star that is losing mass is often called simply the loser and the mass-gaining star the gainer.
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Funding
GJP gratefully acknowledges support from NASA grant 80NSSC18K0919 and STScI grants HST-GO-15659.002 and HST-GO-15869.001. RI acknowledges funding support from a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF), AST-2009412. JLH acknowledges support from NSF under award AST-1816944 and from the University of Denver via a 2021 PROF award. YN acknowledges support from the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (Belgium), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Programme (contracts linked to XMM-Newton and Gaia). Scowen acknowledges his financial support by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to formulate the mission proposal for Polstar.
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All authors shared ideas that motivated this work. We showed how FUV/NUV spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry is key to understanding the evolution of OB close binaries, especially systemic mass and angular momentum loss and transfer. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper. KGG computed the evolutionary tracks in the r-q diagram presented in Sect. 2 and shown in Fig. 1. GJP and KGG were the main contributors to Sects. 2 and 3. RI and JLH contributed the calculations and text for Sect. 4. GJP wrote Sect. 5.
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Peters, G.J., Gayley, K.G., Ignace, R. et al. Ultraviolet spectropolarimetry: conservative and nonconservative mass transfer in OB interacting binaries. Astrophys Space Sci 367, 119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-022-04106-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-022-04106-w