# Self-lensing Discovery of a $0.2\,M_\odot$ White Dwarf in an Unusually Wide Orbit Around a Sun-like Star

## TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a low-mass white dwarf in a wide orbit around a Sun-like star through self-lensing in Kepler data, challenging existing models of white dwarf formation in binaries.

## Contribution

It presents the first detailed analysis of a wide-orbit low-mass white dwarf binary identified via self-lensing, expanding understanding of binary evolution and white dwarf formation.

## Key findings

- White dwarf mass is $0.20\,M_\odot$
- Orbital semi-major axis is $1.28\, ext{au}$
- Orbit eccentricity is $0.14$

## Abstract

We report the discovery of the fifth self-lensing binary in which a low-mass white dwarf (WD) gravitationally magnifies its 15th magnitude G-star companion, KIC 8145411, during eclipses. The system was identified from a pair of such self-lensing events in the Kepler photometry, and was followed up with the Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES) on the 1.5m telescope at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and the High-Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) on the Subaru 8.2m telescope. A joint analysis of the TRES radial velocities, the HDS spectrum, and the Kepler photometry of the primary star determines the WD mass $0.20\pm0.01\,M_\odot$, orbital semi-major axis $1.28\pm0.03\,\mathrm{au}$, and orbital eccentricity $0.14\pm0.02$. Because such extremely low-mass WDs cannot be formed in isolation within the age of the Galaxy, their formation is believed to involve binary interactions that truncated evolution of the WD progenitor. However, the observed orbit of the KIC 8145411 system is at least ten times wider than required for this scenario to work. The presence of this system in the Kepler sample, along with its similarities to field blue straggler binaries presumably containing WDs, may suggest that some 10% of post-AGB binaries with Sun-like primaries contain such anomalous WDs.