Published June 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Discovery of two new polars evolved past the period bounce

  • 1. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 2. ROR icon Institute of Science and Technology Austria
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon University of Warwick
  • 5. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon University of Turku
  • 7. ROR icon Universität Hamburg
  • 8. ROR icon University of Amsterdam

Abstract

We report the discovery of two new magnetic cataclysmic variables with brown dwarf companions and long orbital periods (⁠P_(orb)  = 95 ± 1 and 104 ± 2 min). This discovery increases the sample of candidate magnetic period bouncers with confirmed sub-stellar donors from four to six. We also find their X-ray luminosity from archival XMMNewton observations to be in the range L_X ≈ 10²⁸ –  10²⁹ erg s¹ in the 0.25–10 keV band. This low luminosity is comparable with the other candidates, and at least an order of magnitude lower than the X-ray luminosities typically measured in cataclysmic variables. The X-ray fluxes imply mass transfer rates that are much lower than predicted by evolutionary models, even if some of the discrepancy is due to the accretion energy being emitted in other bands, such as via cyclotron emission at infrared wavelengths. Although it is possible that some or all of these systems formed directly as binaries containing a brown dwarf, it is likely that the donor used to be a low-mass star and that the systems followed the evolutionary track for cataclysmic variables, evolving past the period bounce. The donor in long period systems is expected to be a low-mass, cold brown dwarf. This hypothesis is supported by near-infrared photometric observations that constrain the donors in the two systems to be brown dwarfs cooler than ≈1100 K (spectral types T5 or later), most likely losing mass via Roche Lobe overflow or winds. The serendipitous discovery of two magnetic period bouncers in the small footprint of the XMMNewton catalogue implies a large space density of these type of systems, possibly compatible with the prediction of 40–70 per cent of magnetic cataclysmic variables to be period bouncers.

Copyright and License

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We thank Matthias Schreiber for his insightful comments. Support for this work was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51527.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. Support for this work was provided by NASA through Chandra Award Number GO4-25014X issued by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. IC was also supported by NASA through grants from the Space Telescope Science Institute, under NASA contracts NASA.22K1813, NAS5-26555, and NAS5-03127. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101020057). This research was supported in part by grant NSF PHY-1748958 to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). PJW acknowledges support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) through consolidated grants ST/T000406/1 and ST/X001121/1. RA was supported by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51499.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

This research has made use of data obtained from the 4XMM XMMNewton Serendipitous Source Catalogue compiled by the 10 institutes of the XMMNewton Survey Science Centre selected by ESA. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen’s University Belfast, the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant no. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation grant no. AST–1238877, the University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This work is based in part on data obtained as part of the UKIDSS. This research made use of hips2fits,4 a service provided by CDS, and of astropy (Astropy Collaboration 2013).

Data Availability

Upon request, TC will provide the reduced WIRC and Keck/LRIS data. The data from Gaia, Pan-STARSS, UKIDDS, and XMM–Newton are already in the public domain, and they are readily accessible in the Gaia, Pan-STARSS, and UKIDDS catalogues, and in the XMM–Newton Science Archive.

Files

staf561.pdf

Files (3.2 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:180528cd2b51bf2aa266480fb664a53f
3.2 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2503.12675 (arXiv)

Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
HST-HF2-51527.001-A
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-26555
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Chandra Award GO4-25014X
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS8-03060
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA.22K1813
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-03127
European Research Council
101020057
National Science Foundation
PHY-1748958
Science and Technology Facilities Council
ST/T000406/1
Science and Technology Facilities Council
ST/X001121/1
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
HST-HF2-51499.001-A
Space Telescope Science Institute
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX08AR22G
National Science Foundation
AST-1238877

Dates

Accepted
2025-03-24
Available
2025-04-12
Published
Available
2025-05-22
Corrected and typeset

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published