The gravitational wave radiation of pulsating white dwarfs revisited: the case of BPM 37093 and PG 1159-035

E. GARCÍA-BERRO; P. LORÉN-AGUILAR; A. H. CÓRSICO; L. G. ALTHAUS; J. A. LOBO; J. ISERN

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

EDP Sciences

Lugar: Les Ulis, France; Año: 2006 vol. 446 p. 259 - 266

0004-6361

We  compute  the emission  of  gravitational radiation  from pulsating white dwarfs.   This is done by using  an up-to-date stellar evolutionary  code coupled with  a state-of-the-art  pulsational code. The emission of gravitational waves  is computed for a standard 0.6 Mo white  dwarf  with   a  liquid  carbon-oxygen  core  and  a hydrogen-rich envelope, for a massive  DA white dwarf with a partiallycrystallized core for which  various l=2 modes have been observed (BPM 37093) and for PG 1159-035, the  prototype of the GW Vir class of variable stars, for which  several quadrupole modes have been observed as well.  We find that these  stars do not radiate sizeable amounts of gravitational  waves through  their observed  pulsation  g-modes, in line  with  previous studies.   We  also  explore  the possibility  of detecting  gravitational  waves  radiated  by  the  f-mode  and  the p-modes.  We find that in this case the gravitational wave signal is very large and, hence, the  modes decay very rapidly.  We also discuss the  possible implications of  our calculations  for the  detection of gravitational waves  from pulsating white dwarfs  within the framework of future space-borne interferometers like LISA.