Gravitational Waves from the Merging of White Dwarfs

2003

Binary white dwarfs emit gravitational waves with frequencies of up to a few mHz. As a consequence of the loss of angular momentum both components gradually approach and the gravitational waves emitted by the system increase both in amplitude and frequency (it is said that they chirp). In fact, the chirp of the galactic white dwarf binary population is expected to be the dominant source of noise at low frequencies. A fraction of these binaries, those separated by a distance smaller than roughly three solar radii, will eventually merge in a time shorter than a Hubble time. It is expected that during the merging they will emit gravitational waves transporting extremely valuable information ab…