Aspherical supernova explosions and formation of compact black hole low-mass X-ray binaries

Abstract

It has been suggested that black-hole low-mass X-ray binaries (BHLMXBs) with short orbital periods may have evolved from BH binaries with an intermediate-mass secondary, but the donor star seems to always have higher effective temperatures than measured in BHLMXBs (Justham, Rappaport & Podsiadlowski 2006). Here we suggest that the secondary star is originally an intermediate-mass ($\sim 2-5 M_{\sun}$) star, which loses a large fraction of its mass due to the ejecta impact during the aspherical SN explosion that produced the BH. The resulted secondary star could be of low-mass ($\la 1 M_{\sun}$). Magnetic braking would shrink the binary orbit, drive mass transfer between the donor and the BH, producing a compact BHLMXB.