Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Mass-ratio distribution of extremely low-mass white dwarf binaries   Knowing the masses of the components of binary systems is very useful to
constrain the possible scenarios that could lead to their existence. While it
is sometimes possible to determine the mass of the primary star, for
single-lined spectroscopic binaries it is not trivial to have good estimates of
the mass of the secondary. If a large enough sample of such binaries is
available, it is possible, however, to use statistical methods to determine the
mass ratio distribution, and thus, the secondary mass distribution. Recently,
Andrews et al. (2014) studied the mass distribution of companions to extremely
low-mass white dwarfs, using a sample of binaries from the ELM WD Survey. I
reanalyse the same sample, using two different methods: in the first one, I
assume some functional form for the mass distribution, while in the second, I
apply an inversion method. I show that the resulting companion-mass
distribution can be as well approximated by either a uniform distribution or a
Gaussian distribution. The mass ratio distribution derived from the inversion
method, without assuming any a priori functional form, shows some additional
fine-grain structure, although, given the small sample, it is difficult to
claim that this structure is statistically significant. I conclude that it is
not possible yet to fully constrain the distribution of the mass of the
companions to extremely low-mass white dwarfs, although it appears that the
probability to have a neutron star in one of the systems is indeed very small.

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The categories of this paper are: cs
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The categories of this paper are: econ
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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
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The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
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The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
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The categories of this paper are: solv-int
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The categories of this paper are: quant-ph
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The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
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The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
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The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
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The categories of this paper are: hep-th
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The categories of this paper are: mtrl-th
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The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
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The categories of this paper are: q-bio
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The categories of this paper are: adap-org