Rotational synchronisation of B-type binaries in 30 Doradus

TL;DR

This study examines the rotational synchronization of B-type binary stars in 30 Doradus, revealing that short-period systems tend to be synchronized while longer-period systems are not, with implications for stellar evolution models.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of rotational synchronization in B-type binaries in 30 Doradus using VFTS and BBC survey data.

Findings

Systems with periods >10 days are mostly asynchronous.

Systems with periods <3 days are likely synchronized.

Synchronization correlates with stellar fractional radius.

Abstract

The spin evolution of stars in close binary systems can be strongly affected by tides. We investigate the rotational synchronisation of the stellar components for 69 SB1 systems and 14 SB2 B-type systems in the 30 Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud using observations from the VFTS and BBC surveys. Their orbital periods range from a few to a few hundred days, while estimated primary masses for these systems are in the range 5-20 Msun with mass ratio ranges of approximately q=0.03-0.5 and q=0.6-1.0 for the SB1 and SB2 systems, respectively. Projected rotational velocities of the stellar components have been compared with their synchronous velocities derived from the orbital periods. We find that effectively all systems with orbital period of more than 10 days must be asynchronous, whilst all the systems with periods of less than 3 days are likely synchronised. In terms of the stellar fractional radius (r), our results imply that all systems with r<0.1 are asynchronous, with those having r>0.2 probably being synchronised. For the apparently synchronised systems our results are more consistent with synchronisation at the mean orbital angular velocity rather than with that at periastron.