Gravitational Waves from Stellar Black Hole Binaries and the Impact on Nearby Sun-like Stars

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational waves from nearby stellar black hole binaries can excite acoustic modes in Sun-like stars, causing observable photometric variations detectable by future space missions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for stellar oscillation excitation by gravitational waves from black hole binaries, with predictions for observable amplitude variations.

Findings

Gravitational waves can significantly stimulate stellar acoustic modes.

Predicted photometric variations range from 1 to 1000 ppm.

Detection is feasible with upcoming space telescopes like Plato.

Abstract

We investigate the impact of resonant gravitational waves on quadrupole acoustic modes of Sun-like stars located nearby stellar black hole binary systems (such as GW150914 and GW151226). We find that the stimulation of the low-overtone modes by gravitational radiation can lead to sizeable photometric amplitude variations, much larger than the predictions for amplitudes driven by turbulent convection, which in turn are consistent with the photometric amplitudes observed in most Sun-like stars. For accurate stellar evolution models, using up-to-date stellar physics, we predict photometric amplitude variations of $1$ -- $10^3$ ppm for a solar mass star located at a distance between 1 au and 10 au from the black hole binary, and belonging to the same multi-star system. The observation of such a phenomenon will be within the reach of the Plato mission because telescope will observe several portions of the Milky Way, many of which are regions of high stellar density with a substantial mixed population of Sun-like stars and black hole binaries.