Gravitational Radiation-Driven Chaotic Tide in a White Dwarf-Massive Black Hole Binary as a Source of Repeating X-ray Transients
arXiv:2506.10163 · doi:10.1103/6ltv-j43r
Abstract
Eccentric white dwarf-massive black hole binaries can potentially source some extreme X-ray transients, including the recently observed quasi-periodic X-ray eruptions and tidal disruption events at the galactic nuclei. Meanwhile, they are one of the target gravitational wave sources with extreme mass ratios for future millihertz gravitational wave missions. In this work, we focus on the tidal evolution and orbital dynamics of such binaries under the influence of the tidal backreaction and the dissipative effect from gravitational wave emission. We find that the latter can cause the dynamical tide to evolve chaotically after more than one orbital harmonics encounter the mode resonance through orbital decay. Different from the tidal-driven chaos, which only occurs for pericenter distances within around two times the tidal radius (), this gravitational wave-driven chaos can happen at much larger pericenter distances. The growth scales similarly to a diffusive process, in which the tidal energy grows linearly with time on average over a long duration. If the tidal energy eventually approaches the stellar binding energy, achievable when the pericenter distance is less than , it can cause mass ejection as the wave breaks due to nonlinear effects. We show that this can potentially lead to the repeating partial tidal disruptions observed at galactic centers. That means these disruptions can occur at a much larger pericenter distance than previous analytical estimates. Furthermore, if the system can evolve to a close pericenter distance of about 2.7, the white dwarf can further lose mass via tidal stripping at each pericenter passage. This provides a mechanism for producing the quasi-periodic eruptions.
References in corpus (40)
- Intermediate and Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals -- Astrophysics, Science Applications and Detection using LISA
- Tidal Disruption Events
- X-ray Quasi-Periodic Eruptions from two previously quiescent galaxies
- Formation Rate of Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals in Active Galactic Nuclei
- ASASSN-14ko is a Periodic Nuclear Transient in ESO 253-G003
- Quasi-periodic eruptions from impacts between the secondary and a rigidly precessing accretion disc in an extreme mass-ratio inspiral system
- GSN 069 -- A Tidal Disruption Near-Miss
- X-ray Quasi-periodic Eruptions driven by Star-Disc Collisions : Application to GSN069 and Probing the Spin of Massive Black Holes
- Interacting Stellar EMRIs as Sources of Quasi-Periodic Eruptions in Galactic Nuclei
- Repeating tidal disruptions in GSN 069: Long-term evolution and constraints on quasi-periodic eruptions' models
- Wet Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals May Be More Common For Spaceborne Gravitational Wave Detection
- Stellar transits across a magnetized accretion torus as a mechanism for plasmoid ejection
- Interacting Binaries with Eccentric Orbits II. Secular Orbital Evolution Due To Non-Conservative Mass Transfer
- A self-lensing binary massive black hole interpretation of quasi-periodic eruptions
- Chaotic Tides in Migrating Gas Giants: Forming Hot and Transient Warm Jupiters via High-Eccentricity Migration
- Tormund's return: Hints of quasi-periodic eruption features from a recent optical tidal disruption event
- Quasi-Periodic Erupters: A Stellar Mass-Transfer Model for the Radiation
- A disk instability model for the quasi-periodic eruptions of GSN 069
- The complex time and energy evolution of quasi-periodic eruptions in eRO-QPE1
- X-ray eruptions every 22 days from the nucleus of a nearby galaxy
- Alive and kicking: A new QPE phase in GSN 069 revealing a quiescent luminosity threshold for QPEs
- Gravitational wave bursts from the Galactic massive black hole
- Monthly quasi-periodic eruptions from repeated stellar disruption by a massive black hole
- A model for the possible connection between tidal disruption event and quasi-periodic eruption in GSN 069
- Observing the Galaxy's massive black hole with gravitational wave bursts
- Probing orbits of stellar mass objects deep in galactic nuclei with quasi-periodic eruptions
- Application of the disk instability model to all Quasi-Periodic Eruptions
- A simple and accurate prescription for the tidal disruption radius of a star and the peak accretion rate in tidal disruption events
- Probing orbits of stellar mass objects deep in galactic nuclei with quasi-periodic eruptions -- II: population analysis
- Nonlinear dynamical tides in white dwarf binaries
- Rapid evolution of the recurrence time in the repeating partial tidal disruption event eRASSt J045650.3-203750
- Are WASP-107-like Systems Consistent with High-eccentricity Migration?
- Orbital circularisation of white dwarfs and the formation of gravitational radiation sources in star clusters containing an intermediate mass black hole
- Embers of Active Galactic Nuclei: Tidal Disruption Events and Quasiperiodic Eruptions
- Alive but Barely Kicking: News from 3+ years of Swift and XMM-Newton X-ray Monitoring of Quasi-Periodic Eruptions from eRO-QPE1
- Golden galactic binaries for LISA: mass-transferring white dwarf black hole binaries
- Eppur si muove: Evidence of disc precession or a sub-milliparsec SMBH binary in the QPE-emitting galaxy GSN 069
- Tidal evolution and diffusive growth during high-eccentricity planet migration: revisiting the eccentricity distribution of hot Jupiters
- Tidal Wave Breaking in the Eccentric Lead-In to Mass Transfer and Common Envelope Phases
- Tides in the high-eccentricity migration of hot Jupiters: Triggering diffusive growth by nonlinear mode interactions