Binaries at Low Metallicity: ranges for case A, B and C mass transfer

TL;DR

This paper investigates how low metallicity influences binary star evolution, particularly increasing the likelihood of case C mass transfer, which impacts the formation rates of various astrophysical objects.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the metallicity dependence of binary mass transfer cases, especially highlighting the increased occurrence of case C at low metallicity.

Findings

Low metallicity binaries are more likely to undergo case C mass transfer.

At solar metallicity, case C is rare for massive stars due to limited expansion and stellar winds.

Metallicity affects the initial separation range for different mass transfer cases.

Abstract

The evolution of single stars at low metallicity has attracted a large interest, while the effect of metallicity on binary evolution remains still relatively unexplored. We study the effect of metallicity on the number of binary systems that undergo different cases of mass transfer. We find that binaries at low metallicity are more likely to start transferring mass after the onset of central helium burning, often referred to as case C mass transfer. In other words, the donor star in a metal poor binary is more likely to have formed a massive CO core before the onset of mass transfer. At solar metallicity the range of initial binary separations that result in case C evolution is very small for massive stars, because they do not expand much after the ignition of helium and because mass loss from the system by stellar winds causes the orbit to widen, preventing the primary star to fill its Roche lobe. This effect is likely to have important consequences for the metallicity dependence of the formation rate of various objects through binary evolution channels, such as long GRBs, double neutron stars and double white dwarfs.