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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Dominic BowmanORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Magnetars are highly magnetized neutron stars, the formation mechanism of which is unknown. Hot helium-rich stars with spectra dominated by emission lines are known as Wolf-Rayet stars. We observed the binary system HD 45166 using spectropolarimetry and reanalyzed its orbit using archival data. We found that the system contains a Wolf-Rayet star with a mass of 2 solar masses and a magnetic field of 43 kilogauss. Stellar evolution calculations indicate that this component will explode as a supernova, and that its magnetic field is strong enough for the supernova to leave a magnetar remnant. We propose that the magnetized Wolf-Rayet star formed by the merger of two lower-mass helium stars.
Author(s): Shenar T, Wade GA, Marchant P, Bagnulo S, Bodensteiner J, Bowman DM, Gilkis A, Langer N, Nicolas-Chené A, Oskinova L, Van Reeth T, Sana H, St-Louis N, de Oliveira AS, Todt H, Toonen S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Science
Year: 2023
Volume: 381
Issue: 6659
Pages: 761-765
Print publication date: 18/08/2023
Online publication date: 17/08/2023
Acceptance date: 15/06/2023
Date deposited: 18/11/2024
ISSN (print): 0036-8075
ISSN (electronic): 1095-9203
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
URL: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3293
DOI: 10.1126/science.ade3293
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/q1gc-wt58
Data Access Statement: Reduced and wavelength-calibrated FEROS, ESPaDOnS, LNA and HERMES spectra, the TESS light curve, the input and output files of our stellar evolution models, and the Zeeman source code are archived at Zenodo. The PoWR source code is available on GitHub https://github.com/powr-code/PoWR and archived at Zenodo. Our measured RVs are provided in data S1. The raw ESPaDOnS spectra are available on the CFHT archive www.cadc-ccda.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/cfht under proposal ID 22BC13. The raw FEROS data are available on the ESO archive http://archive.eso.org/eso/eso_archive_main.html under target name HD 45166; we used the observations taken in 2002. The IUE data are available on MAST at https://archive.stsci.edu/iue/search.php under program IDs WRJSH, JA017, and EI273. The FUSE data are available on MAST at https://archive.stsci.edu/fuse/search.php under program ID P224. The raw TESS data are available on MAST at https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/tess
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