When asymmetric cosmic bubbles betray a difficult marriage: the study of binary central stars of Planetary Nebulae

TL;DR

This paper explores how binary star systems influence the diverse shapes of planetary nebulae, highlighting recent discoveries of binary central stars and their implications for stellar evolution and morphology.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence linking binary evolution, especially common-envelope phases, to nebula morphology and the formation of chemically peculiar stars.

Findings

Binary central stars are responsible for a large fraction of planetary nebulae.

Discovery of a rare barium-rich cool central star.

Strong links between binarity and nebula morphology.

Abstract

Planetary Nebulae represent a powerful window into the evolution of low-intermediate mass stars that have undergone extensive mass-loss. The nebula manifests itself in an extremely wide variety of shapes, but exactly how the mass lost is shaped into such a diverse range of morphologies is still highly uncertain despite over thirty years of vigorous debate. Binaries have long been thought to offer a solution to this vexing problem. Now, thanks to recent surveys and improved observing strategies, it appears clearly that a binary channel, in particular common-envelope (CE) evolution, is responsible for a large fraction of planetary nebulae. Moreover, as planetary nebulae are just "fresh out of the oven" compared to other post-CE systems, they provide invaluable contributions to the study of common-envelope evolution and to the formation of jets in binary systems. Our studies have also started to identify strong links between binarity and morphology, including a high proportion of bipolar nebulae and rings of low ionisation filaments resembling SN 1987A. Equally important are the newly found binary CSPN with intermediate periods, which appear linked to chemically peculiar stars whose composition was modified by binary evolution. Their study may also reveal much information on mass and angular momentum transfer processes in binary stars. Here we show examples of four PNe for which we have discovered their binary nature, including the discovery of a rare case of a barium-rich cool central star.