Are the very faint X-ray transients period gap systems?
Abstract
We discuss a scenario for the very faint X-ray transients as X-ray binaries fed by winds from detached M dwarf donors in binary stars within the `period gap' - the range of periods where donor stars have become fully convective, and shrunken so that they no longer fill their Roche lobes, but have not yet re-attached due to the systems shrinking through gravitational radiation. This wind-fed detached binary scenario can reproduce the two key properties of the very faint X-ray transients - their faintness, which defines them, and their relatively low duty cycle outbursts which require that they have low mean mass transfer rates. We discuss feasible observational tests of the scenario.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/sts113
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1210.0434
- Bibcode:
- 2013MNRAS.428.1335M
- Keywords:
-
- accretion;
- accretion discs;
- binaries: close;
- stars: late-type;
- stars: mass-loss;
- X-rays: binaries;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 7 pages, no figures, accepted to MNRAS