Empirical Determination of the Gravity-Darkening Exponent for the Secondary Components Filling the Roche Lobe in Semi-Detached Close Binary Systems

Extract

The ordinary semi-detached close binary system consists of a main-sequence primary and subgiant (or giant) secondary component where the latter fills the Roche lobe. From a quantitative analysis of the observed ellipticity effect, Kitamura and Nakamura (1986) have deduced empirical values of the exponent of gravity-darkening for distorted main-sequence stars in detached systems and found that the empirical values of the exponent for these stars with early-type spectra are close to the unity, indicating that the subsurface layers of early-main sequence stars in close binaries are actually in radiative equilibrium. The exponent of gravity-darkening can be defined by H ∝ g^α with H as the bolonetric surface brightness and g as the local gravity on the stellar surface.