The gravitational wave signal from the Galactic disk population of binaries containing two compact objects

Nelemans, G.; Yungelson, L. R.; Zwart, Simon F. Portegies

doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20010683

Cited by 472 publications

(713 citation statements)

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“…4 It is apparent how LISA could detect the GWB above 10 À5 Hz, while the peak at nHz frequencies is close to current limits of pulsar timing experiments (Lommen 2002). We have also plotted the GWB expected in the LISA window from the cosmological population of white dwarf binaries computed by Farmer & Phinney (2003) and the GWB from unresolved Galactic white dwarf binaries (Nelemans et al 2001). Our estimate of the background due to MBH binaries lies well above the expected strain from cosmological white dwarf binaries.…”

Section: Gravv Itational Wavv E Backgg Roundmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…While the data stream of LISA will include confusion noise arising from a large number of unresolved Galactic and extragalactic white dwarf binaries (Farmer & Phinney 2003;Nelemans et al 2001), the GWB from MBH binaries will be resolvable into discrete sources at least in the high-frequency end of the LISA sensitivity range. The nature (stochastic or resolved) of the GWB can be assessed by counting the number of events per resolution frequency bin whose observed signal is larger than a given sensitivity threshold h c;min .…”

Section: Resolvv Able Sigg Nalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Long-dashed line at 10 À6 Hz P f P 0:1 Hz: Expected strain from extragalactic white dwarf binaries (Farmer & Phinney 2003). Dotted line at 10 À4 Hz P f P 10 À3 Hz: Expected strain from unresolved Galactic white dwarf binaries (Nelemans et al 2001). …”

Section: Gravv Itational Wavv E Backgg Roundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2004

ApJ

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We compute the expected low-frequency gravitational wave signal from coalescing massive black hole (MBH) binaries at the center of galaxies in a hierarchical structure formation scenario in which seed holes of intermediate mass form far up in the dark halo ''merger tree.'' The merger history of dark matter halos and associated MBHs is followed via cosmological Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy from redshift z ¼ 20 to the present in a ÃCDM cosmology. MBHs get incorporated through halo mergers into larger and larger structures, sink to the center because of dynamical friction against the dark matter background, accrete cold material in the merger remnant, and form MBH binary systems. Stellar dynamical (three-body) interactions cause the hardening of the binary at large separations, while gravitational wave emission takes over at small radii and leads to the final coalescence of the pair. A simple scheme is applied in which the ''loss cone'' is constantly refilled and a constant stellar density core forms because of the ejection of stars by the shrinking binary. The integrated emission from inspiraling MBH binaries at all redshifts is computed in the quadrupole approximation and results in a gravitational wave background (GWB) with a well-defined shape that reflects the different mechanisms driving the late orbital evolution. The characteristic strain spectrum has the standard h c ( f ) / f À2=3 behavior only in the range f ¼ 10 À9 to 10 À6 Hz. At lower frequencies the orbital decay of MBH binaries is driven by the ejection of background stars (''gravitational slingshot''), and the strain amplitude increases with frequency, h c ( f ) / f . In this range the GWB is dominated by 10 9 -10 10 M MBH pairs coalescing at 0 P z P 2. At higher frequencies, f > 10 À6 Hz, the strain amplitude, as steep as h c ( f ) / f À1:3 , is shaped by the convolution of last stable circular orbit emission by lighter binaries (10 2 -10 7 M ) populating galaxy halos at all redshifts. We discuss the observability of inspiraling MBH binaries by a low-frequency gravitational wave experiment such as the planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Over a 3 yr observing period LISA should resolve this GWB into discrete sources, detecting %60 (%250) individual events above an S=N ¼ 5 (S=N ¼ 1) confidence level.

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Section: Gravv Itational Wavv E Backgg Roundmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Resolvv Able Sigg Nalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2004

ApJ

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“…It has been shown in the literature (see [2] for a recent study and [3,4] for earlier investigations) that these sources will be dominated by detached white-dwarf -white-dwarf (WD-WD) binaries, with 1.1 × 10 8 of such systems in our Galaxy. The detached WD-WD binaries evolve by gravitational-radiation reaction and the number of such sources rapidly decreases with increasing orbital frequency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

White-dwarf–white-dwarf galactic background in the LISA data

et al. 2005

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LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) is a proposed space mission, which will use coherent laser beams exchanged between three remote spacecraft to detect and study low-frequency cosmic gravitational radiation. In the low-part of its frequency band, the LISA strain sensitivity will be dominated by the incoherent superposition of hundreds of millions of gravitational wave signals radiated by inspiraling white-dwarf binaries present in our own galaxy. In order to estimate the magnitude of the LISA response to this background, we have simulated a synthesized population that recently appeared in the literature. Our approach relies on entirely analytic expressions of the LISA Time-Delay Interferometric responses to the gravitational radiation emitted by such systems, which allows us to implement a computationally efficient and accurate simulation of the background in the LISA data. We find the amplitude of the galactic white-dwarf binary background in the LISA data to be modulated in time, reaching a minimum equal to about twice that of the LISA noise for a period of about two months around the time when the Sun-LISA direction is roughly oriented towards the Autumn equinox. This suggests that, during this time period, LISA could search for other gravitational wave signals incoming from directions that are away from the galactic plane. Since the galactic white-dwarfs background will be observed by LISA not as a stationary but rather as a cyclostationary random process with a period of one year, we summarize the theory of cyclostationary random processes, present the corresponding generalized spectral method needed to characterize such process, and make a comparison between our analytic results and those obtained by applying our method to the simulated data. We find that, by measuring the generalized spectral components of the white-dwarf background, LISA will be able to infer properties of the distribution of the white-dwarfs binary systems present in our Galaxy.

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“…Those with separations small enough to have experienced one or two common envelope phases are particularly interesting, as they are thought to be progenitors of supernovae Type Ia (Iben & Tutukov 1984;Webbink 1984), Type .Ia (Bildsten et al 2007), R CrB stars (Webbink 1984) and AM CVn systems (Breedt et al 2012;Kilic et al 2014b). In addition, mergers of Galactic double white dwarfs occur relatively frequently (Badenes & Maoz 2012), and constitute ⋆ E-mail: m.c.p.bours@warwick.ac.uk the main source of the background gravitational wave signal at frequencies detectable from space (Nelemans et al 2001;Hermes et al 2012). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A double white dwarf with a paradoxical origin?

Bours¹,

Marsh²,

Gänsicke³

et al. 2015

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We present Hubble Space Telescope UV spectra of the 4.6 h period double white dwarf SDSS J125733.63+542850.5. Combined with Sloan Digital Sky Survey optical data, these reveal that the massive white dwarf (secondary) has an effective temperature T 2 = 13030 ± 70 ± 150 K and a surface gravity log g 2 = 8.73 ± 0.05 ± 0.05 (statistical and systematic uncertainties respectively), leading to a mass of M 2 = 1.06 M ⊙ . The temperature of the extremely low-mass white dwarf (primary) is substantially lower at T 1 = 6400 ± 37 ± 50 K, while its surface gravity is poorly constrained by the data. The relative flux contribution of the two white dwarfs across the spectrum provides a radius ratio of R 1 /R 2 ≃ 4.2, which, together with evolutionary models, allows us to calculate the cooling ages. The secondary massive white dwarf has a cooling age of ∼ 1 Gyr, while that of the primary low-mass white dwarf is likely to be much longer, possibly 5 Gyrs, depending on its mass and the strength of chemical diffusion. These results unexpectedly suggest that the low-mass white dwarf formed long before the massive white dwarf, a puzzling discovery which poses a paradox for binary evolution.

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The gravitational wave signal from the Galactic disk population of binaries containing two compact objects

Cited by 472 publications

References 50 publications

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White-dwarf–white-dwarf galactic background in the LISA data

A double white dwarf with a paradoxical origin?

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