A search for RCB stars in globular clusters
  There are only about 65 R Coronae Borealis stars known in our Galaxy, and
none in globular clusters. As these stars are thought to result from the merger
of two white dwarfs, one would expect the higher stellar density of globular
clusters to favor their formation. We have searched for such stars in Galactic
globular clusters, as their presence in a specific category of clusters might
provide more clues as to their formation. We selected from the WISE all-Sky
source catalog all the stars within the tidal radius of the 150 globular
clusters within 50 kpc, which is the distance to which RCB stars are detectable
by WISE. The total number of stars selected in this way was 635989. We then
successively applied the eight selection criteria of Tisserand (2012) satisfied
by RCB stars to the dereddened photometric WISE and 2MASS data. Only three
stars satisfying the conditions were found in the field of three globular
clusters. The star in the field of Liller 1 is most probably a protostar. For
the two other candidates, the absence of photometry in the visible range did
not allow us to establish their nature with certainty. We further identified
one dust-enshrouded star that only satisfied the first selection criteria, and
used DUSTY to determine that it is a star of temperature 4800K enshrouded in a
dusty envelope with a temperature 300 K and an opacity in the visible of 0.59.
It is probably an Xray binary star with a dusty accretion disk. We found no RCB
stars truly belonging to a globular cluster, thus providing a constraint on
their formation mechanism.
