Stable mass transfer from a substellar object onto an M dwarf
Name
Householder_etal_2026_NatAstro_accepted_manuscript_with_figures_ED_SI.pdf
Size
4.12 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a181df1af61e91480a1ca46ddb9efd24
Author(s)
Householder, Aaron
Shin, Kaitlyn
Burdge, Kevin
Marsh, Thomas
Rappaport, Saul
El-Badry, Kareem
Chakraborty, Joheen
Chickles, Emma
Dai, Fei
Graham, Matthew
Date Issued
October 5, 2026
Journal
Nature Astronomy
Publisher
Springer Nature
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Substellar objects such as brown dwarfs and planets are generally expected to remain detached from their main-sequence host stars unless orbital decay or stellar expansion brings them into contact, leading to rapid engulfment and destruction. Such a fate is predicted for the Earth and other rocky planets in our solar system. In certain cases, however, theory also allows for stable long-lived mass transfer from a substellar object onto its main-sequence host, though such accretion has not been observed. Here we report the direct observation of stable mass transfer from a substellar object onto a main-sequence star. In particular, we identify ZTF J0440+2325, an 87-minute binary in which a brown dwarf stably transfers mass onto an M dwarf, and present ZTF J1444+4820 (P = 67 min) as a strong candidate low-mass mass-transferring system in a hierarchical triple. These systems demonstrate that the fate of some substellar objects is not rapid engulfment and destruction, but instead gradual consumption for potentially billions of years.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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