The Walkaway Star HP Tau/G2: Evidence for a Stellar Merger

TL;DR

This paper presents evidence that the star HP Tau/G2 is the result of a stellar merger, providing insights into stellar evolution, dynamics, and the potential commonality of such events in young stellar objects.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed case study linking a stellar merger to observable properties of a T Tauri star and discusses the dynamical history leading to its formation.

Findings

G2 is a low-mass, rapidly rotating star with signs of a recent merger.

The star's properties match those of FK Com, a merger product.

Stellar mergers may be common and relate to FUor eruptions.

Abstract

HP~Tau/G2 is a luminous, short-period, fast-rotating G-type weak-line T Tauri star with a large radius, an oblate shape with gravity-darkening, little circumstellar material, and centered in a slowly expanding cloud cavity. It is an X-ray source and a variable nonthermal radio source. It forms, together with the late-type T Tauri star KPNO 15, a pair of oppositely directed walkaway stars launched when a multiple system broke apart ~5600 yr ago. Momentum conservation indicates a mass of G2 of only ~0.7 Msun, much lower than the ~1.9 Msun determined from evolutionary models. G2 is virtually a twin of FK Com, the prototype of a class of evolved stars resulting from coalescence of W UMa binaries. We suggest that G2 became a very close and highly eccentric binary during viscous evolution in the protostellar stage and with KPNO 15 formed a triple system, which again was part of a larger unstable group including the binary G3 and the single G1. Dynamical evolution led to multiple bound ejections of KPNO 15 before it finally escaped after ~2 Myr. As a result the G2 binary recoiled and contracted 5600 yr ago, became Darwin unstable and merged in a major outburst ~2000 yr ago. The nearby compact triple system G1+G3 was also disturbed, and broke up 4900 yr ago, forming another walkaway pair. The G5 star HD 283572 has similar unusual properties, indicating that G2 is not a pathological case. G2 is now fading towards a new stable configuration. YSO mergers may be rather common and could explain some FUor eruptions.