arXiv · 2607.27873
Thermal Breaking of the I-Love Universality for Hot White Dwarfs
Abstract
The universal I-Love-Q relations for compact stars have significant applications in gravitational-wave astronomy, but thermal effects can break these relations in low-mass white dwarfs. In this work, we employ the stellar evolution code MESA to construct realistic models of $0.15 \, M_{\odot}$ helium-core and $0.6 \, M_{\odot}$ carbon-oxygen core white dwarfs at various temperatures. By utilizing the Clairaut-Radau equation, we quantitatively extract the radial variation of the eccentricity of internal isodensity surfaces. Our numerical results demonstrate that higher central temperatures amplify the eccentricity variation, causing the I-Love relations to deviate from the zero-temperature Chandrasekhar model, whereas subsequent cooling restores them. This confirms that the temperature-induced violation of the universal relations is fundamentally driven by the loss of self-similarity in isodensity surfaces, providing key insights into the applicability conditions of I-Love-Q relations in compact objects.
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Jinyi Lv, Jing-Yi Wu, Hongji Chen, Kexin Jia, Weihan Sun, Kilar Zhang. 2026-07-30. Thermal Breaking of the I-Love Universality for Hot White Dwarfs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27873
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