The ELM Survey. VI. Eleven New Double Degenerates

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of 11 new extremely low-mass white dwarf binary systems, analyzes their properties, and discusses their evolutionary implications, including merger prospects and potential pulsations.

Contribution

It introduces eleven new ELM white dwarf binaries, provides detailed physical and orbital parameters, and explores their evolutionary and kinematic properties, expanding the known sample.

Findings

Five systems will merge within a Hubble time due to gravitational waves.

The systematic uncertainty in mass estimates is approximately 0.01 solar masses.

A significant fraction of ELM WDs are likely members of the Galactic halo.

Abstract

We present the discovery of 11 new double degenerate systems containing extremely low-mass white dwarfs (ELM WDs). Our radial velocity observations confirm that all of the targets have orbital periods $\leq$ 1 day. We perform spectroscopic fits and provide a complete set of physical and binary parameters. We review and compare recent evolutionary calculations and estimate that the systematic uncertainty in our mass determinations due to differences in the evolutionary models is small ($\approx$ 0.01 M$_{\odot}$). Five of the new systems will merge due to gravitational wave radiation within a Hubble time, bringing the total number of merger systems found in the ELM Survey to 38. We examine the ensemble properties of the current sample of ELM WD binaries, including the period distribution as a function of effective temperature, and the implications for the future evolution of these systems. We also revisit the empirical boundaries of instability strip of ELM WDs and identify new pulsating ELM WD candidates. Finally, we consider the kinematic properties of our sample of ELM WDs and estimate that a significant fraction of the WDs from the ELM Survey are members of the Galactic halo.