AM Canum Venaticorum star

An AM Canum Venaticorum star (AM CVn star), is a rare type of cataclysmic variable star named after their type star, AM Canum Venaticorum. In these hot blue binary variables, a white dwarf accretes hydrogen-poor matter from a compact companion star.

These binaries have extremely short orbital periods (shorter than about one hour) and have unusual spectra dominated by helium with hydrogen absent or extremely weak. They are predicted to be strong sources of gravitational waves, strong enough to be detected with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).