2008MNRAS.384L..16L

It has been suggested that black hole low-mass X-ray binaries (BHLMXBs) with short orbital periods may have evolved from BH binaries with an intermediate-mass secondary, but the donor star seems to always have higher effective temperatures than measured in BHLMXBs. Here we suggest that the secondary star is originally an intermediate-mass (∼2-5M_☉) star, which loses a large fraction of its mass due to the ejecta impact during the aspherical suparnova explosion that produced the BH. The resulted secondary star could be of low mass (≲1M_☉). Magnetic braking would shrink the binary orbit and drive mass transfer between the donor and the BH, producing a compact BHLMXB.