A Cyclic Thermal Instability in Contact Binary Stars

Abstract

Contact binary stars coupled by a common convective envelope in which the entropy is constant, the Lucy model, are unstable against mass exchange: if either component begins to transfer mass, it will continue to do so. A detailed sequence of models is calculated which follows the thermal evolution of a 2 M ⊙ contact binary of normal Population I abundances ( X =0.70, Z = 0.02), starting at nearly equal mass. The initial instability develops into a cyclic mass-exchange with the mass fraction oscillating between 0.56≤ m 2 /( m 1 + m 2 )≤0.62 with a period of ~10 7 yr. Throughout the cycle the component stars are not in thermal equilibrium. The instability is of a general nature, and such oscillating systems can satisfactorily populate the short period, red region of the period color relation for WUMa stars.