The Physics of Ultracompact Stellar Binaries

Details The Physics of Ultracompact Stellar Binaries The Physics of Ultracompact Stellar Binaries

Feb 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003pusb.worke....b&link_type=abstract

Presented at the KITP Workshop: The Physics of Ultracompact Stellar Binaries, Feb 1-2, 2003, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Phy

Physics

Scientific paper

The dramatic increase in the number of known interacting binaries with orbital periods below an hour, and the growing advantages of bringing together three separate communities(AM CVn white dwarf binaries; neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries; and gravitational wave astrophysics/LISA), are the motivations for this workshop meeting. The most relevant developments:
Recent progress in the AM CVn community includes discoveries of many new systems that are filling in the period distribution, possible detection of a number of short period systems with direct impact, and sufficient statistics on double degenerate systems to begin to understand AM CVn populations.
In the neutron star systems, the progress has been triggered by the recent discovery of two new systems, both of which are X-ray transients harboring an accreting millisecond pulsar. In addition, Chandra X-ray spectroscopy of at least one system suggests a chemically fractionated white dwarf donor which was previously crystallized, raising a number of interesting questions about white dwarf cooling and the properties of the donors in ultracompact systems.
Both of these classes of system are natural targets for gravitational wave detection with LISA.
All of these systems share a number of open questions:
* Evolution to make such a system. Frequency of double degenerates,
stability at the onset of mass transfer.
* Accretion disk properties. Thermal stability of He and C/O accretion
disks, spectral lines. Origin and evolution during outbursts and
properties in quiescence.
* Accretion disk precession/superhumps in extreme-mass-ratio systems.
* Gravitational wave emission: many of these are candidates for direct
detection by LISA.
* Properties of the low-mass He or C/O donor: the donor stars are
probably not the cold white dwarfs encountered in standard textbooks.

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