2013A&A...552A..69V

We model the present-day number and properties of ultracompact X-ray binaries (UCXBs) in the Galactic bulge. The main objective is to compare the results to the known UCXB population as well as to data from the Galactic Bulge Survey, in order to learn about the formation of UCXBs and their evolution, such as the onset of mass transfer and late-time behavior. The binary population synthesis code SeBa and detailed stellar evolutionary tracks have been used to model the UCXB population in the Bulge. The luminosity behavior of UCXBs has been predicted using long-term X-ray observations of the known UCXBs as well as the thermal-viscous disk instability model. In our model, the majority of UCXBs initially have a helium burning star donor. Of the white dwarf donors, most have helium composition. In the absence of a mechanism that destroys old UCXBs, we predict (0.2-1.9)x10⁵ UCXBs in the Galactic bulge, depending on assumptions, mostly at orbital periods longer than 60 min (a large number of long-period systems also follows from the observed short-period UCXB population). About 5-50 UCXBs should be brighter than 10³⁵erg/s, mostly persistent sources with orbital periods shorter than about 30-min and with degenerate helium and carbon-oxygen donors. This is about one order of magnitude more than the observed number of (probably) three. This overprediction of short-period UCXBs by roughly one order of magnitude implies that fewer systems are formed, or that a super-Eddington mass transfer rate is more difficult to survive than we assumed. The very small number of observed long-period UCXBs with respect to short-period UCXBs, the surprisingly high luminosity of the observed UCXBs with orbital periods around 50-min, and the properties of the PSR J1719-1438 system all point to much faster UCXB evolution than expected from angular momentum loss via gravitational wave radiation alone. Old UCXBs, if they still exist, probably have orbital periods longer than 2h and have become very faint due to either reduced accretion or quiescence, or have become detached. UCXBs are promising candidate progenitors of isolated millisecond radio pulsars.