The Effect of Neutron Star Gravitational Binding Energy on Gravitational Radiation–driven Mass‐Transfer Binaries

In a relativistic model of a neutron star, the star's mass is less than themass of the individual component baryons. This is due to the fact that thestar's negative binding energy makes a contribution to the star's total energyand its mass. A consequence of this relativistic mass deficit is that a neutronstar that is accreting matter increases its mass at a rate which is slower thanthe mass of a baryon times the rate that baryons are accreted. This differencein the rate of change of the masses has a simple relation with the star'sgravitational redshift. We show that this effect has the potential to beobserved in binaries where the mass transfer is driven by angular momentumlosses from the gravitational radiation emitted by the binary motion.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Ap