218 research outputs found
CoBiToM Project -- II: Evolution of contact binary systems close to the orbital period cut-off
Ultra-short orbital period contact binaries (Porb < 0.26 d) host some of the
smallest and least massive stars. These systems are faint and rare, and it is
believed that they have reached a contact configuration after several Gyrs of
evolution via angular momentum loss, mass transfer and mass loss through
stellar wind processes. This study is conducted in the frame of Contact
Binaries Towards Merging (CoBiToM) Project and presents the results from light
curve and orbital analysis of 30 ultra-short orbital period contact binaries,
with the aim to investigate the possibility of them being red nova progenitors,
eventually producing merger events. Approximately half of the systems exhibit
orbital period modulations, as a result of mass transfer or mass loss
processes. Although they are in contact, their fill-out factor is low (less
than 30 per cent), while their mass ratio is larger than the one in longer
period contact binaries. The present study investigates the orbital stability
of these systems and examines their physical and orbital parameters in
comparison to those of the entire sample of known and well-studied contact
binaries, based on combined spectroscopic and photometric analysis. It is found
that ultra-short orbital period contact binaries have very stable orbits, while
very often additional components are gravitationally bound in wide orbits
around the central binary system. We confirmed that the evolution of such
systems is very slow, which explains why the components of ultra-short orbital
period systems are still Main Sequence stars after several Gyrs of evolution
Period changes in six contact binaries: WZ And, V803 Aql, DF Hya, PY Lyr, FZ Ori, and AH Tau
Six contact binaries lacking a period analysis have been chosen to search for
the presence of a third body. The O-C diagrams of these binaries were analyzed
with the least-squares method by using all available times of minima. Ten new
minima times, obtained from our observations, were included in the present
research. The Light-Time Effect was adopted for the first time as the main
cause for the detailed description of the long-term period changes. Third
bodies were found with orbital periods from 49 up to 100 years, and
eccentricities from 0.0 to 0.56 for the selected binaries. In one case (WZ
And), a fourth-body LITE variation was also applied. The mass functions and the
minimal masses of such bodies were also calculated and a possible angular
separation and magnitude differences were discussed for a prospective
interferometric discovery of these bodies.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 2009 New Astronomy 14, 12
Tree-Level Stability Without Spacetime Fermions: Novel Examples in String Theory
Is perturbative stability intimately tied with the existence of spacetime
fermions in string theory in more than two dimensions? Type 0'B string theory
in ten-dimensional flat space is a rare example of a non-tachyonic,
non-supersymmetric string theory with a purely bosonic closed string spectrum.
However, all known type 0' constructions exhibit massless NSNS tadpoles
signaling the fact that we are not expanding around a true vacuum of the
theory. In this note, we are searching for perturbatively stable examples of
type 0' string theory without massless tadpoles in backgrounds with a spatially
varying dilaton. We present two examples with this property in non-critical
string theories that exhibit four- and six-dimensional Poincare invariance. We
discuss the D-branes that can be embedded in this context and the type of gauge
theories that can be constructed in this manner. We also comment on the
embedding of these non-critical models in critical string theories and their
holographic (Little String Theory) interpretation and propose a general
conjecture for the role of asymptotic supersymmetry in perturbative string
theory.Comment: harvmac, 29 pages; v2 minor changes, version to appear in JHE
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