English

Characterizing accreting double white dwarf binaries with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and Gaia

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2018-05-09 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to fully characterize mass-transferring double white dwarf (DWD) systems with a helium-rich (He) WD donor based on the mass--radius relationship for He WDs. Using a simulated Galactic population of DWDs, we show that donor and accretor masses can be inferred for up to 60\sim\, 60 systems observed by both Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and Gaia. Half of these systems will have mass constraints ΔMD0.2M\Delta\,M_{\rm{D}}\lesssim0.2M_{\odot} and ΔMA2.3M\Delta\,M_{\rm{A}}\lesssim2.3\,M_{\odot}. We also show how the orbital frequency evolution due to astrophysical processes and gravitational radiation can be decoupled from the total orbital frequency evolution for up to 50\sim 50 of these systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.08370,
  title  = {Characterizing accreting double white dwarf binaries with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and Gaia},
  author = {Katelyn Breivik and Kyle Kremer and Michael Bueno and Shane L. Larson and Scott Coughlin and Vassiliki Kalogera},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.08370},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Updated to match publication in ApJ Letters; 8 pages, 4 figures