Tidal resonance locks in inspiraling white dwarf binaries

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tidal resonance locks are a universal phenomenon in inspiraling white dwarf binaries, leading to efficient tidal dissipation, near-synchronous rotation, and observable surface heating effects.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of tidal resonance locks in white dwarf binaries, deriving simple formulas for tidal quality factors and heating rates, and confirming their occurrence through numerical verification.

Findings

Resonance locks occur universally in WD binaries.

Tidal quality factor Q ~ 10^7 for 1-2 hr periods in C/O WDs.

Tidal heating can reach ~1% of solar luminosity at 10-minute periods.

Abstract

We calculate the tidal response of helium and carbon/oxygen (C/O) white dwarf (WD) binaries inspiraling due to gravitational wave emission. We show that resonance locks, previously considered in binaries with an early-type star, occur universally in WD binaries. In a resonance lock, the orbital and spin frequencies evolve in lockstep, so that the tidal forcing frequency is approximately constant and a particular normal mode remains resonant, producing efficient tidal dissipation and nearly synchronous rotation. We show that analogous locks between the spin and orbital frequencies can occur not only with global standing modes, but even when damping is so efficient that the resonant tidal response becomes a traveling wave. We derive simple analytic formulas for the tidal quality factor Q and tidal heating rate during a g-mode resonance lock, and verify our results numerically. We find that Q ~ 10^7 for orbital periods ~ 1 - 2 hr in C/O WDs, and Q ~ 10^9 for P_orb ~ 3 - 10 hr in helium WDs. Typically tidal heating occurs sufficiently close to the surface that the energy should be observable as surface emission. Moreover, near an orbital period of ~ 10 min, the tidal heating rate reaches ~ 10^{-2} L_\sun, rivaling the luminosities of our fiducial WD models. Recent observations of the 13-minute double-WD binary J0651 are roughly consistent with our theoretical predictions. Tides naturally tend to generate differential rotation; however, we show that the fossil magnetic field strength of a typical WD can maintain solid-body rotation down to at least P_orb ~ 10 min even in the presence of a tidal torque concentrated near the WD surface.