An extremely fast halo hot subdwarf star in a wide binary system

Abstract

New spectroscopic observations of the halo hyper-velocity star candidate SDSS J121150.27+143716.2 ($V=17.92$ mag) revealed a cool companion to the hot subdwarf primary. The components have a very similar radial velocity and their absolute luminosities are consistent with the same distance, confirming the physical nature of the binary, which is the first double-lined hyper-velocity candidate. Our spectral decomposition of the Keck/ESI spectrum provided an sdB+K3V pair, analogous to many long-period subdwarf binaries observed in the Galactic disk. We found the subdwarf atmospheric parameters: $T_{\rm eff}=30\,600\pm500$ K, $\log{g}=5.57\pm0.06$ cm s$^{-2}$ and He abundance $\log(n{\rm He}/n{\rm H})=-3.0\pm0.2$. Oxygen is the most abundant metal in the hot subdwarf atmosphere, and Mg and Na lines are the most prominent spectral features of the cool companion, consistent with a metallicity of $[{\rm Fe}/{\rm H}]=-1.3$. The non-detection of radial velocity variations suggest the orbital period to be a few hundred days, in agreement with similar binaries observed in the disk. Using the SDSS-III flux calibrated spectrum we measured the distance to the system $d=5.5\pm0.5$ kpc, which is consistent with ultraviolet, optical, and infrared photometric constraints derived from binary spectral energy distributions. Our kinematic study shows that the Galactic rest-frame velocity of the system is so high that an unbound orbit cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, a bound orbit requires a massive dark matter halo. We conclude that the binary either formed in the halo or it was accreted from the tidal debris of a dwarf galaxy by the Milky Way.