# Inferring the Presence of Tides in Detached White Dwarf Binaries

## TL;DR

This paper discusses how tidal interactions in white dwarf binaries affect gravitational wave signals and presents methods to detect and analyze these effects through orbital period derivatives and tidal heating insights.

## Contribution

It introduces analytic relations for orbital derivatives to infer tidal effects in detached white dwarf binaries from gravitational wave data.

## Key findings

- Deviations in orbital period derivatives indicate tidal interactions.
- Analytic relations enable detection of tidal locking without precise mass measurements.
- Tidal heating offers additional information on binary evolution.

## Abstract

Tidal interactions can play an important role as compact white dwarf (WD) binaries are driven together by gravitational waves (GWs). This will modify the strain evolution measured by future space-based GW detectors and impact the potential outcome of the mergers. Surveys now and in the near future will generate an unprecedented population of detached WD binaries to constrain tidal interactions. Motivated by this, I summarize the deviations between a binary evolving under the influence of only GW emission and a binary that is also experiencing some degree of tidal locking. I present analytic relations for the first and second derivative of the orbital period and braking index. Measurements of these quantities will allow the inference of tidal interactions, even when the masses of the component WDs are not well constrained. Finally, I discuss tidal heating and how it can provide complimentary information.