POPULATION SYNTHESIS OF CATACLYSMIC VARIABLES. I. INCLUSION OF DETAILED NUCLEAR EVOLUTION

Abstract

We have carried out an extensive population synthesis study of the ensemble properties of the present-day population of cataclysmic variables (PDCVs) that takes into account the nuclear evolution of high-mass donors close to the bifurcation and dynamical instability limits. Assuming the interrupted magnetic braking paradigm, we confirm many of the general features associated with the observed CV population and find enormous diversity in their secular properties. We predict that nearly half of the non-magnetic CVs with Porb > 6 hours are at least mildly evolved (i.e., greater than one-half of their MS turn-off age). Some of these systems contribute to the observed population of PDCVs in the period gap. We also see an enhancement by up to a factor of two in the probability of detecting CVs at the `minimum period'. This spike is quite narrow (approximately 5 minutes) and is attenuated because of the spectrum of WD masses and partly by the evolution of the donors. Our syntheses imply that there should be a very rapid decline in the number of ultracompact CVs (such as AM CVns). We find that between 0.05 to 1 percent of PDCVs could be UCs, and thus it is likely that the CV channel is probably not the primary contributor to the intrinsic population of UCs (especially for Porb < 30 minutes). Finally, a preliminary analysis of our results suggests that WDs in PDCVs experience a net gain in mass of less than about 0.1 Msun as a result of high mass-transfer rates early in their evolution.