Discovery of a high state AM CVn binary in the Galactic Bulge Survey

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a high state AM CVn binary in the Galactic Bulge, characterized by unique optical and X-ray properties, with potential implications for gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

It presents the first identification of a hydrogen-deficient AM CVn binary in the Galactic Bulge with detailed optical and X-ray observations, including periodicity analysis.

Findings

Detected two significant optical periodicities at ~23 minutes.

No evidence of outbursts over 15 years of monitoring.

Estimated distance between 0.5 and 1.1 kpc.

Abstract

We report on the discovery of a hydrogen-deficient compact binary (CXOGBS J175107.6-294037) belonging to the AM CVn class in the Galactic Bulge Survey. Deep archival X-ray observations constrain the X-ray positional uncertainty of the source to 0.57 arcsec, and allow us to uniquely identify the optical and UV counterpart. Optical spectroscopic observations reveal the presence of broad, shallow He i absorption lines while no sign of hydrogen is present, consistent with a high state system. We present the optical lightcurve from Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment monitoring, spanning 15 years. It shows no evidence for outbursts; variability is present at the 0.2 mag level on timescales ranging from hours to weeks. A modulation on a timescale of years is also observed. A Lomb-Scargle analysis of the optical lightcurves shows two significant periodicities at 22.90 and 23.22 min. Although the physical interpretation is uncertain, such timescales are in line with expectations for the orbital and superhump periods. We estimate the distance to the source to be between 0.5 - 1.1 kpc. Spectroscopic follow-up observations are required to establish the orbital period, and to determine whether this source can serve as a verification binary for the eLISA gravitational wave mission.