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arXiv · 1810.09296

The missing mass conundrum of post-common-envelope planetary nebulae

Miguel Santander-García·David Jones·Javier Alcolea·Roger Wesson·Valentín Bujarrabal
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Abstract

Most planetary nebulae (PNe) show beautiful, axisymmetric morphologies despite their progenitor stars being essentially spherical. Angular momentum provided by a close binary companion is widely invoked as the main agent that would help eject an axisymmetric nebula, after a brief phase of engulfment of the secondary within the envelope of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star, known as a common envelope (CE). The evolution of the AGB would be thus interrupted abruptly, its (still quite) massive envelope fully ejected to form the PN, which should be more massive than a PN coming from the same star were it single. We test this hypothesis by deriving the ionised+molecular masses of a pilot sample of post-CE PNe and comparing them to a regular PNe sample. We find the mass of post-CE PNe to be actually lower, on average, than their regular counterparts, raising some doubts on our understanding of these intriguing objects.

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Miguel Santander-García, David Jones, Javier Alcolea, Roger Wesson, Valentín Bujarrabal. 2018-10-22. The missing mass conundrum of post-common-envelope planetary nebulae. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1743921318005495

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