The photometric and spectroscopic investigations of ten contact binaries were presented for the first time. It is discovered that the mass ratios of all the ten targets are smaller than 0.15, they are extremely low mass ratio contact binaries. Seven of them are deep contact binaries, two are medium contact binaries, while only one is a shallow contact system. Five of them show the O’Connell effect, and a dark spot on one of the two components can lead to a good fit of the asymmetric light curves. The orbital period studies of the ten binaries reveal that they all exhibit long-term period changes, six of them are increasing, while the others are shrinking. The LAMOST spectra were analyzed by the spectral subtraction method, and all the ten targets exhibit excess emissions in the H α line, indicating chromospheric activity. The evolutionary states of the two components of the ten binaries were studied, and it is found that their evolutionary states are identical to those of the other contact binaries. Based on the study of the relation between orbital angular momentum and total mass, we discovered the ten systems may be at the late evolutionary stage of a contact binary. The initial masses of the two components and the ages of them were obtained. By calculating the instability parameters, we found that the ten contact binaries are relatively stable at present.
In this paper, we present the first light curve synthesis and orbital period change analysis of nine contact binaries around the short-period limit. It is found that all these systems are W-subtype contact binaries. One of them is a medium contact system while the others are shallow contact ones. Four of them manifest obvious O’Connell effect explained by a dark spot or hot spot on one of the component stars. Third light was detected in three systems. By investigating orbital period variations, we found that four of the targets display a secular period decrease while the others exhibit a long-term period increase. The secular period decrease is more likely caused by angular-momentum loss while the long-term period increase is due to mass transfer from the less massive component to the more massive one. Based on the statistic of 19 ultrashort-period contact binaries with known orbital period changes, we found that seven of them display long-term decrease (three of them also exhibit cyclic variations), ten of them manifest long-term increase while two of them only show cyclic variation, and that most of them are shallow contact binaries supporting the long timescale angular-momentum loss theory suggested by Stepien. For the three deep contact systems, we found that they are probably triple systems. The tertiary companion plays an essential role during their formation and evolution.
A comprehensive photometric study and an investigation of the orbital period variation of V53 in the globular cluster M 4 are presented. The photometric study reveals that the mass ratio and the contact degree of V53 are q ∼ 0.078 and f ∼ 69%, respectively. The observed variation in the light curve can be explained by adjusting the spot parameters. V53 belongs to extreme mass ratio (q ≤ 0.25), deep contact (f ≥ 50%) binaries, and its mass ratio is close to the minimum mass ratio predicted by theoretical studies, making it a potential object for studying the evolution of binaries and the formation of blue stragglers and FK Com-type stars. The orbital period of V53 shows a long-term decrease at a rate of dp/dt = 5.89(±0.02) × 10−8 d yr−1. This secular period decrease may be caused by the combination of mass transfer from the more massive component to the less massive component and an angular momentum loss via magnetic braking. As this mass transfer and angular momentum loss continues, V53 will ultimately evolve into a single fast-rotation star. By studying the statistics of all the contact binaries in globular clusters that have been analyzed, we found a possible correlation between the contact degree and whether or not a contact binary is a blue straggler. A contact binary is likely to become a blue straggler when its fill-out factor is more than 46.25(±2.05)%. More samples should be introduced to confirm this preliminary result in the future.
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