Mass transfer between double white dwarfs

By T. Marsh, G. Nelemans, D. Steeghs. 2003

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Three periodically variable stars have recently been discovered (V407 Vul, P=9.5 min; ES Cet, P=10.3 min; RX J0806.3+1527, P=5.3 min) with properties that suggest that their photometric periods are also their orbital periods, making them the most compact binary stars known. If true, this might indicate that close, detached, double white dwarfs are able to survive the onset of mass transfer caused by gravitational wave radiation and emerge as the semi-detached, hydrogen-deficient stars known as the AM CVn stars. The accreting white dwarfs in such systems are large compared to the orbital separations. This has two effects. First, it makes it likely that the mass-transfer stream can hit the accretor directly. Secondly, it causes a loss of angular momentum from the orbit which can destabilize the mass transfer unless the angular momentum lost to the accretor can be transferred back to the orbit. The effect of the destabilization is to reduce the number of systems which survive mass transfer by as much as one hundredfold. In this paper we analyse this destabilization and the stabilizing effect of a dissipative torque between the accretor and the binary orbit. We obtain analytical criteria for the stability of both disc-fed and direct impact accretion, and we carry out numerical integrations to assess the importance of secondary effects, the chief one being that otherwise stable systems can exceed the Eddington accretion rate. We show that to have any effect upon survival rates, the synchronizing torque must act on a time-scale of the order of 1000 yr or less. If synchronization torques are this strong, then they will play a significant role in the spin rates of white dwarfs in cataclysmic variable stars as well.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/33e0d63c653d7f09c06116c90d16e4ee134602f1

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Citations in the corpus

Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “The stability of the mass transfer depends critically on the tidal interaction between the two white dwarfs (Marsh et al., 2004): In the absence of any tidal interaction, there will be additional angular momentum loss from the orbit due to the transfer of angular momentum from the orbit to the…”
AGaiaData Release 2 catalogue of white dwarfs and a comparison with SDSS (2018, background): “…2013), exotic atmospheric compositions (Schmidt et al. 1999; Dufour et al. 2010; Gänsicke et al. 2010; Kepler et al. 2016a), close doubledegenerates (Marsh et al. 2004; Parsons et al. 2011), metal polluted white dwarfs (Sion et al. 1990; Zuckerman & Reid 1998; Dufour et al. 2007b; Koester et al.…”
Faint Thermonuclear Supernovae from AM Canum Venaticorum Binaries (2007, background): “The measured local galactic density of AM CVn’s (Roelofs et al. 2007b) yields a mass specific AM CVn birthrate in an old stellar population of (0.7 − 2) ≈ 10−15 AM CVn yr−1L⊙,K−1.”
THE FORMATION OF ECCENTRIC COMPACT BINARY INSPIRALS AND THE ROLE OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE EMISSION IN BINARY–SINGLE STELLAR ENCOUNTERS (2013, background): “In WD-NS binaries containing moderately massive WDs, the resulting mass transfer is stable, and the binary overcomes the destabilizing effects produced by GW radiation due to the ongoing mass transfer (e.g. Marsh et al. 2004; Paschalidis et al. 2009).”
SURFACE DETONATIONS IN DOUBLE DEGENERATE BINARY SYSTEMS TRIGGERED BY ACCRETION STREAM INSTABILITIES (2009, background): “The thick solid line shows the transition from direct impact to disk accretion, while the dot-dashed curve shows the separation between sub- and super-Eddington accretion in the weak coupling limit (Marsh et al. 2004).”
Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the CMC Cluster Catalog (2019, background): “Closely related to the CVs are the AM CVn systems, compact binaries (orbital periods 1 hr) where a WD accretes hydrogenpoor material from either an He WD or naked He star (e.g., Paczyński 1967; Marsh et al. 2004; Nelemans 2005).”
Predicting the LISA white dwarf binary population in the Milky Way with cosmological simulations (2019, background): “Stable mass transfer could then lead to the widening of the orbit, which would keep the system in the LISA band for longer (Marsh et al. 2004; Gokhale et al. 2007).”
MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): BINARIES, PULSATIONS, AND EXPLOSIONS (2015, methodology): “To compute the specific angular momentum carried by accreted material, we consider the possibility of both ballistic and Keplerian disk mass transfer (e.g., Marsh et al. 2004; de Mink et al. 2013).”
THE LONG-TERM EVOLUTION OF DOUBLE WHITE DWARF MERGERS (2011, background): “Once mass transfer begins, material leaves the less massive WD’s Roche nozzle and directly impacts the surface of the more massive WD (Webbink 1984; Marsh et al. 2004).”
Three Hypervelocity White Dwarfs in Gaia DR2: Evidence for Dynamically Driven Double-degenerate Double-detonation Type Ia Supernovae (2018, background): “…between two WDs can be dynamically stable or unstable, depending on the donor’s response to mass loss, whether or not the mass transfer is conservative, and the degree to which the angular momentum of the transferred mass can be converted back into orbital angular momentum (Marsh et al. 2004).”