Grazing envelope evolution toward Type IIb supernovae

Abstract

I propose a scenario where the majority of the progenitors of type IIb supernovae (SNe IIb) lose most of their hydrogen-rich envelope during a grazing envelope evolution (GEE). In the GEE the orbital radius of the binary system is about equal to the radius of the giant star, and the more compact companion accretes mass through an accretion disk. The accretion disk is assumed to launch two opposite jets that efficiently remove gas from the envelope along the orbit of the companion. The efficient envelope removal by jets prevents the binary system from entering a common envelope evolution, at least for part of the time. The GEE might be continuous or intermittent. I crudely estimate the total GEE time period to be in the range of about hundreds of years, for a continuous GEE, and up to few tens of thousands of years for intermittent GEE. The key new point is that the removal of envelope gas by jets during the GEE prevents the system from entering a common envelope evolution, and by that substantially increases the volume of the stellar binary parameter space that leads to SNe IIb, both to lower secondary masses and to closer orbital separations.