Gravitational waves from double white dwarfs

Abstract

Double white dwarfs could be important sources for space based gravitational wave detectors like OMEGA and LISA. We use population synthesis to predict the current population of double white dwarfs in the Galaxy and the gravitational waves produced by this population. We simulate a detailed power spectrum for an observation with an integration time of 10^6 s. At frequencies below ~3 mHz confusion limited noise dominates. At higher frequencies a few thousand double white dwarfs are resolved individually. Including compact binaries containing neutron stars and black holes in our calculations yields a further few hundred resolved binaries and some tens which can be detected above the double white dwarf noise at low frequencies. We find that binaries in which one white dwarf transfers matter to another white dwarf are rare, and thus unimportant for gravitational wave detectors. We discuss the uncertainties and compare our results with other authors.