Searching for Pulsations from a Helium White Dwarf Companion to a Millisecond Pulsar

Details Searching for Pulsations from a Helium White Dwarf Companion to a Millisecond Pulsar Searching for Pulsations from a Helium White Dwarf Companion to a Millisecond Pulsar

Aug 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008noao.prop..413s&link_type=abstract

NOAO Proposal ID #2008B-0413

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The low mass white dwarf (WD) companion to the 3.26 ms pulsar PSR J1911-5958A offers an unprecedented opportunity for seismological study of the interior of a helium core WD. While much more massive carbon/oxygen core WDs are observed to pulsate in normal modes of oscillation called g-modes, no helium core pulsator is known. By extrapolating the boundaries of the ZZ Ceti instability strip downward in surface gravity by a factor of 20 below any known pulsator, we find that the effective temperature of this WD makes it an excellent candidate to search for pulsations. Detection of g-mode pulsations in the lightcurve would have a transformative effect on the field of WD pulsations, as this would allow the first seismological study of the interior of a helium core WD, and the low gravity strongly constrains theories for the driving and amplitudes of pulsations. We show that with 5 hours of GMOS-S observation on the Gemini South Telescope, we will detect photometric amplitudes of 1%, lower than typically seen in other hydrogen-dominated ZZ Ceti stars. A set of measured mode periods would also constrain the thickness of the presumed stably hydrogen burning shell, and help us determine its age more securely.

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