Dust Formation in the Ejecta of Common Envelope Systems

TL;DR

This paper models dust formation in common-envelope ejecta, showing that such environments can produce significant dust masses, potentially surpassing dust production in AGB stars under certain conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model combined with dust formation simulations to estimate dust production in CE ejecta, highlighting its potential significance.

Findings

Dust can form efficiently in CE ejecta environments.

Dust masses depend strongly on temperature and density evolution.

CE ejecta may produce more dust than AGB stars in some cases.

Abstract

The material that is ejected in a common-envelope (CE) phase in a close binary system provides an ideal environment for dust formation. By constructing a simple toy model to describe the evolution of the density and the temperature of CE ejecta and using the \emph{AGBDUST} code to model dust formation, we show that dust can form efficiently in this environment. The actual dust masses produced in the CE ejecta depend strongly on their temperature and density evolution. We estimate the total dust masses produced by CE evolution by means of a population synthesis code and show that, compared to dust production in AGB stars, the dust produced in CE ejecta may be quite significant and could even dominate under certain circumstances.