Tidal heating in close binary stellar systems
Abstract
The present consideration of tidal heating in a close binary system's low-mass star due to the conjugate effect of angular momentum loss and tidal action, with attention to the flow within the secondary, notes in the case of cataclismic binaries that viscous dissipation is at most one-thousandth of the nuclear luminosity of a star, thereby confirming by a more exact model the results of Verbunt and Hut (1981). It is shown, however, that the dissipation is very sensitive to the turbulent viscosity of the secondary's envelope. Attention is also given to the case of very close pairs of white dwarfs, which may dissipate a power as great as 10 to the 38th erg/sec if they reach synchronization, but whose detection will be very difficult.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- July 1987
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/227.2.295
- Bibcode:
- 1987MNRAS.227..295R
- Keywords:
-
- Angular Momentum;
- Binary Stars;
- Cataclysmic Variables;
- Plasma Heating;
- Stellar Mass;
- White Dwarf Stars;
- Computational Astrophysics;
- Magnetohydrodynamic Flow;
- Stellar Evolution;
- Stellar Luminosity;
- Tides;
- Viscosity;
- Astrophysics