Gravitational-wave-moderated Accretion: The Case of ES Ceti

We show that recent observations of the compact binary, AM CVn type system, ES Ceti are fully consistent with theoretical predictions of stable mass transfer moderated by angular momentum loss due to gravitational-wave radiation. One of the main predictions of this model (for degenerate donors) is a widening of the binary. The mass transfer rate inferred from the observed rate of change in the orbital frequency is consistent with that inferred from the observed flux using the recent Gaia DR2 parallax