Presaging Doppler beaming discoveries of double white dwarfs during the Rubin LSST era

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST can detect and characterize double white dwarf binaries through Doppler beaming, providing new insights into binary evolution and gravitational wave sources.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation framework predicting LSST's capability to identify Doppler-beamed DWDs, linking observations to binary evolution models.

Findings

LSST can recover at least 287 short-period DWDs.

47 DWDs are detectable by LISA as gravitational wave sources.

Lightcurves enable full orbital characterization.

Abstract

Double white dwarfs (DWDs) are by far the most common compact binaries in the Milky Way, are important low-frequency gravitational-wave sources, and in some cases merge to become Type Ia supernovae. So far, no DWD has been identified solely through relativistic Doppler beaming, even though the beaming amplitude directly relates to the radial velocity semi-amplitude. In this work, we initiate a comprehensive binary population synthesis using SeBa and incorporate the resulting binaries into a tripartite Galaxy model. Our proof-of-concept simulations demonstrate that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) can reliably recover relatively bright ($r \lesssim20~$mag) unequal-mass binaries in compact orbits with P $\approx$ 10-600 minutes with moderate to high inclinations. We find that LSST can detect at least 287 short-period DWDs, of which 47 are LISA-detectable gravitational wave sources. LSST lightcurves allow us to readily determine the period and fully characterize the orbit, in contrast with the challenges of orbit determination for DWDs in spectroscopic searches. The formation of unequal mass, short-period DWDs strongly depends on the assumptions regarding the mass-transfer phases during binary population synthesis, and the total number and characteristics of Doppler-beamed DWD systems observed in LSST will provide new tests of models of stellar binary evolution. Here, we lay the foundation for the comprehensive integration of synthetic Galactic binary population into realistic LSST survey simulations, thereby enabling quantitative forecasts of the number and characteristics of any binary sub-population during the LSST era.