Observing white dwarf tidal stripping with TianQin gravitational wave observatory

Abstract

Recently discovered regular X-ray bursts known as quasi-periodic eruptions have a proposed model that suggests a tidal stripping white dwarf inspiralling into the galaxy's central black hole on an eccentric orbit. According to this model, the interaction of the stripping white dwarf with the central black hole would emit gravitational wave signals as well, their detection can help explore the formation mechanism of quasi-periodic eruptions and facilitate multi-messenger observations. In this paper, we aim to perform a preliminary study of the gravitation wave observation of TianQin on this stripping white dwarf model. We investigated the horizon distance of TianQin on this type of gravitation wave signal and found it can be set to 200Mpc. We also find that those stripping white dwarf model sources with central black hole mass within $10^4\sim10^{5.5}M_\odot$ are more likely to be detected by TianQin. We assessed the parameter estimation precision of TianQin on those stripping white dwarf model sources. Our result shows that, even in the worst case, TianQin can determine the central black hole mass, the white dwarf mass, the central black hole spin, and the orbital initial eccentricity with a precision of $10^{-2}$. In the optimistic case, TianQin can determine the central black hole mass and the white dwarf mass with a precision of $10^{-7}$, determine the central black hole spin with a precision of $10^{-5}$, and determine the orbital initial eccentricity with a precision of $10^{-8}$. Moreover, TianQin can determine the luminosity distance with a precision of $10^{-1}$ and determine the sky localization with a precision of $10^{-2}\sim10$ $\rm deg^2$.