Close Binary White Dwarf Systems: Numerous New Detections and Their Interpretation Rex A. Saffer1 & Mario Livio Space Telescope Science Institute2, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, MD 21218 email: saff
[email protected],
[email protected] Lev R. Yungelson Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Acadamy of Sciences, 48 Pyatnitskaya St., Moscow 109017, Russia email:
[email protected] Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal ABSTRACT We describe radial velocity observations of a large sample of apparently single white dwarfs (WDs), obtained in a long-term effort to discover close, double-degenerate (DD) pairs which might comprise viable Type Ia Supernova (SN Ia) progenitors. We augment the WD sample with a previously observed sample of apparently single subdwarf B (sdB) stars, which are believed to evolve directly to the WD cooling sequence after the cessation of core helium burning. We have identified 18 new radial velocity variables, including five confirmed sdB+WD short-period pairs. Our observations are in general agreement with the predictions of the theory of binary star evolution. We describe a numerical method to evaluate the detection efficiency of the survey and estimate the arXiv:astro-ph/9802356v1 27 Feb 1998 number of binary systems not detected due to the effects of varying orbital inclination, orbital phase at the epoch of the first observation, and the actual temporal sampling of each object in the sample. Follow-up observations are in progress to solve for the orbital parameters of the candidate velocity variables. Subject headings: stars: white dwarfs — binaries: close — stars: supernovae 1Current address: Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Ave., Villanova, PA 19085, email: saff
[email protected] 2Operated by The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.