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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Lense-Thirring frame dragging induced by a fast-rotating white dwarf in a binary pulsar system
V Venkatraman Krishnan1,2, M Bailes3,4, W van Straten5
1Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria 3122, Australia. vkrishnan@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de.
Abstract:
Radio pulsars in short-period eccentric binary orbits can be used to study both gravitational dynamics and binary evolution. The binary system containing PSR J1141-6545 includes a massive white dwarf (WD) companion that formed before the gravitationally bound young radio pulsar. We observed a temporal evolution of the orbital inclination of this pulsar that we infer is caused by a combination of a Newtonian quadrupole moment and Lense-Thirring (LT) precession of the orbit resulting from rapid rotation of the WD. LT precession, an effect of relativistic frame dragging, is a prediction of general relativity. This detection is consistent with an evolutionary scenario in which the WD accreted matter from the pulsar progenitor, spinning up the WD to a period of <200 seconds.
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