The absence of magnetic white dwarfs with a non-degenerate low-mass stellar companion in a wide binary is still very intriguing and at odds with the hypothesis that magnetic white dwarfs are the progenies of the magnetically peculiar Ap/Bp stars. On the other hand, we cannot resort to a process that impedes the generation of a strong magnetic field in the main or pre-main sequence progenitors of white dwarfs if they are in a multiple stellar system, because such a process would also prevent the formation of magnetic cataclysmic variables consisting of a magnetic white dwarf accreting mass from a low-mass companion. This is the reason why it has been proposed that fields in white dwarfs may be linked to their binarity and are generated through a dynamo mechanism during common envelope evolution.
@article{arxiv.1810.06146,
title = {The Origin of Magnetism in White Dwarfs},
author = {Lilia Ferrario},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.06146},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 21st European Workshop on White Dwarfs held July 23-27, 2018 in Austin, TX, USA