English

Discovery of the richest pulsating ultra-massive white dwarf

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-01-24 v1

Abstract

The discovery of pulsations in ultra-massive white dwarfs can help to probe their interiors and unveil their core composition and crystallized mass fraction through asteroseismic techniques. To date, the richest pulsating ultra-massive white dwarf known is BPM 37093 with 8 modes detected, for which detailed asteroseismic analysis has been performed in the past. In this work, we report the discovery of 19 pulsation modes in the ultra-massive white dwarf star WD~J0135+5722, making it the richest pulsating hydrogen-atmosphere ultramassive white dwarf known to date. %In this work, we report the discovery of pulsations in WD~J0135+5722, a hydrogen-rich ultra-massive white dwarf observed with the Gran Telescopio Canarias. This object exhibits multi-periodic luminosity variations with periods ranging from 137 to 1345 s, typical of pulsating white dwarfs in the ZZ Ceti instability strip, which is centered at Teff12000T_{\rm eff} \sim 12\,000 K. We estimate the stellar mass of WD J0135+5722 by different methods, resulting in M1.121.14MM_{\star} \sim 1.12-1.14 M_{\odot} if the star's core is made of oxygen and neon, or M1.141.15MM_{\star} \sim 1.14-1.15 M_{\odot} if the star hosts a carbon oxygen core. Future analysis of the star periods could shed light on the core chemical composition through asteroseismology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.13661,
  title  = {Discovery of the richest pulsating ultra-massive white dwarf},
  author = {Francisco C. De Geronimo and Murat Uzundag and Alberto Rebassa-Mansergas and Alex Brown and Mukremin Kilic and Alejandro H. Corsico and Gracyn C. Jewett and Adam G. Moss},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.13661},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

11 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJL