A Young White Dwarf with an Infrared Excess
Abstract
Using observations of Spitzer/IRAC, we report the serendipitous discovery of excess infrared emission from a single white dwarf PG 0010+280. At a temperature of 27,220 K and a cooling age of 16 Myr, it is the hottest and youngest white dwarf to display an excess at 3-8 m. The infrared excess can be fit by either an opaque dust disk within the tidal radius of the white dwarf or a 1300 K blackbody, possibly from an irradiated substellar object or a re-heated giant planet. PG 0010+280 has two unique properties that are different from white dwarfs with a dust disk: (i) relatively low emission at 8 m and (ii) non-detection of heavy elements in its atmosphere from high-resolution spectroscopic observations with Keck/HIRES. The origin of the infrared excess remains unclear.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.02614,
title = {A Young White Dwarf with an Infrared Excess},
author = {S. Xu and M. Jura and B. Pantoja and B. Klein and B. Zuckerman and K. Y. L. Su and H. Y. A. Meng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.02614},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
ApJ Letters, accepted