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Observational identification of a sample of likely recent common-envelope events

Abstract

One of the most poorly understood stellar evolutionary paths is that of binary systems undergoing common-envelope evolution, when the envelope of a giant star engulfs the orbit of a companion. The interaction that ensues leads to a great variety of astrophysical systems and associated phenomena, but happens over a very short timescale. Unfortunately, direct empirical studies of this momentous and complex phase are difficult at present because few objects experiencing, or having just experienced, common-envelope evolution are known. Here we present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of minor CO isotopologues towards a sample of sources known as water fountains, which reveal that almost all of them recently lost a substantial fraction of their initial mass over a timescale of less than a few tens to a few hundreds of years. The only known mechanism able to explain such rapid mass ejection, corresponding to a large fraction of the stellar mass, is the common-envelope evolution. A stellar population analysis shows that the number of water-fountain sources in the Milky Way is comparable to the expected number of common-envelope events that involve low-mass evolved stars. Thus, the known sample of water-fountain sources accounts for a large fraction of the systems undergoing a common-envelope phase in our Galaxy. As one of the distinguishing characteristics of water-fountain sources is their fast bipolar outflow, we conclude that outflows and jets play an important role right before, during or immediately after the common-envelope phase.

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Fig. 1: 12C18O spectra towards the sources with detection.
Fig. 2: Images of the integrated intensity of the 12C16O, J = 2–1 line towards the water fountain sources.
Fig. 3: Images of the integrated intensity of the 12C18O, J = 2–1 line towards the water fountain sources with detection.
Fig. 4: Moment-zero map of the 13C16O, J = 3–2 line towards IRAS 15445−5449 and IRAS 18043−2116.

Data availability

The reduced data employed in this study is publicly available through the ALMA archive with Project IDs 2018.1.00250.S and 2016.1.01032.S.

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Acknowledgements

This study made use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA 2018.1.00250.S and 2016.1.01032.S. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), and in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The authors acknowledge support from the Nordic ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) node based at the Onsala Space Observatory. The Nordic ARC node and Swedish observations on APEX are funded through the Swedish Research Council grant no. 2017-00648. This publication is based on data acquired with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) under programme ID 0104.F-9310(A). APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, the ESO and the Onsala Space Observatory. T.K. is supported by Swedish Research Council starting grant no. 2019-03777. W.H.T.V. and T.K. are supported by Swedish Research Council grant no. 2014-05713. C.S.C. is supported by the Spanish MICINN through grant no. PID2019-105203GB-C22. J.F.G. is supported by MCIU-AEI through the ‘Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa’ award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), from grants AYA2017-84390-C2-1-R and PID2020-114461GB-I00 of AEI (10.13039/501100011033), co-funded by FEDER, and from the Amanogawa Galaxy Astronomy Research Center (AGARC). H.I. is supported by the MEXT KAKENHI programme (16H02167) and i-LINK+2019 programme at IAA/CSIC. J.F.G. and H.I. are supported by the Invitation Program for Foreign Researchers of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (grant no. S14128).

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W.H.T.V., D.T., C.S.C., J.F.G., H.I. and R.S. conceived and designed the experiment. T.K., W.H.T.V. and D.T. analysed the data. W.H.T.V., T.K., D.T., A.F.P.-S., C.S.C., J.F.G., H.I. and R.S. contributed materials or analysis tools. T.K., W.H.T.V. and D.T. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Theo Khouri.

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Khouri, T., Vlemmings, W.H.T., Tafoya, D. et al. Observational identification of a sample of likely recent common-envelope events. Nat Astron 6, 275–286 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01528-4

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