MGAB-V240: 23-min AM CVn star showing both 12-d supercycle and standstills

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of MGAB-V240, an AM CVn star with the shortest known supercycle and genuine standstills, observed through ZTF data, with implications for helium disk instability and binary evolution.

Contribution

It is the first to identify an AM CVn star exhibiting both a 12-day supercycle and standstills, confirming theoretical predictions about helium disk behavior.

Findings

MGAB-V240 has a 12-day supercycle with superoutbursts and normal outbursts.

Superhumps with a period of 22.79 minutes were detected during superoutbursts.

The system's behavior supports the disk instability theory for helium accretion disks.

Abstract

Using Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) data, I noticed that MGAB-V240 = PS1-3PI J185529.82+323017.8 showed two different states: regularly outbursting state with a cycle length of 12 d and standstills. I found that the regularly outbursting state was in fact a sequence of superoutburst and intervening normal outbursts comprising a 12 d supercycle. During one of the superoutbursts, superhumps with a period of 0.015824(9) d (=22.79 min) were detected in the ZTF time-resolved data. This period and behavior have confirmed that MGAB-V240 is an AM CVn-type object with the shortest known supercycle and the second known AM CVn star showing genuine standstills. The standstills in this system were interrupted by short drops and the system often brightened after these drops. This phenomenon can be explained by the accumulation of the transferred matter in the outer part of the disk during the drops. This phenomenon favors a constant mass-transfer from the secondary combined with the difficulty in maintaining the hot state in a helium disk rather than a temporary decrease of the mass-transfer rate as the cause of these drops. MGAB-V240 should be close to the border of the thermal instability of a helium disk, and the observed superhump period agrees very well with the activity sequence expected by the disk instability theory and the evolutionary sequence of AM CVn stars.