Population synthesis of hot subdwarf B stars with COMPAS: on the observed Galactic population

TL;DR

This study uses binary population synthesis with COMPAS to model the Galactic population of hot subdwarf B stars, comparing synthetic data with observations to understand their formation and properties better.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison between simulated and observed sdB populations, highlighting the importance of envelope mass distributions and identifying gaps in current observational data.

Findings

Synthetic sdB population matches observed properties well in the Kiel diagram.

Estimated number of sdBs within 500 pc is at least four times higher than observed.

Reproduces the P-q relation for sdBs with main-sequence companions.

Abstract

Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are helium-burning stars with thin hydrogen-rich envelopes. Their most widely accepted formation channels involve binary evolution and progenitors near the tip of the red giant branch, thus studying these objects improves our knowledge of complicated astrophysical processes such as common envelope evolution and the helium flash. In this work, we compare the observed sdB population with a synthetic Galactic population generated through the binary population synthesis code COMPAS, which allows us to estimate the physical properties of the current-day Galactic sdB population. We show that our synthetic sdB population matches the general properties of the observations quite well in the Kiel diagram when either a normal or lognormal distribution is assumed for the assignment of hydrogen-rich envelope masses. We also find that the canonical mass assumption should only be confidently assumed for specific system configurations and that the estimated number of sdBs found within 500 pc of the Sun in our model is at least four times higher than the observational one. We recover the observational P-q relation for sdBs plus main-sequence companions, while a similar relation between sdBs and helium white dwarf companions is rather complicated. We conclude that a better understanding of hydrogen-rich envelopes is needed, as well as an observational characterization of the sdB plus main-sequence companions earlier than spectral type $~$F. These issues aside, atmospheric properties, companion types, period, and mass distributions are in good agreement with observational and theoretical studies available in the literature.