1998/10/29 by Yuri Levin · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/307196
20 pages, 1 ps figure
arxiv created 1998/10/29 · openalex publication_date 1999/05/20 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Recently Andersson et al. and Bildsten have independently suggested that an r -mode instability might be responsible for stalling the neutron star spin-up in strongly accreting low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We show that if this does occur, there are two possibilities for the resulting neutron star evolution. If the r -mode damping is a decreasing function of temperature, then the star undergoes a cyclic evolution: (1) accretional spin-up triggers the instability near the observed maximum spin rate; (2) the r -modes become highly excited through gravitational radiation reaction, and in a fraction of a year (0.13 yr in a particular model that we have considered) they viscously heat the star up to T ~2.5 × 10 9 K; (3) r -mode gravitational radiation reaction then spins the star down in t spindown ≃0.08( f final /130 Hz) −6 yr to a limiting rotational frequency f final , whose exact value depends on the not fully understood mechanisms of r -mode damping; (4) the r -mode instability shuts off; and (5) the neutron star slowly cools and is spun up by accretion for ~5 × 10 6 yr, until it once again reaches the instability point, closing the cycle. The shortness of the epoch of r -mode activity makes it unlikely that r -modes are currently excited in the neutron star of any galactic LMXBs, and unlikely that advanced LIGO interferometers will see gravitational waves from extragalactic LMXBs. Nevertheless, this cyclic evolution could be responsible for keeping the rotational frequencies within the observed LMXB frequency range. If, on the other hand, the r -mode damping is temperature independent, then a steady state with constant angular velocity and T core ≃ 4 × 10 8 K is reached, in which r -mode viscous heating is balanced by neutrino cooling and accretional spin-up torque is balanced by gravitational radiation reaction spin-down torque. In this case (as Bildsten and Andersson et. al. have shown) the neutron stars in LMXBs could be potential sources of periodic gravitational waves, detectable by enhanced LIGO interferometers.