Tim Cunningham
The DECam Rogue Earths and Mars Survey (DREAMS), a NOIRLab survey program, has been conducting a three-year survey covering a 5\,deg$^2$ area in the Galactic bulge since 2025 June. Its primary science goal is to detect low-mass…
White dwarf stars, the endpoint of stellar evolution for 97% of stars in our Milky Way, offer a unique and powerful window into the bulk elemental composition of rocky exoplanetary bodies. Up to 50% of single white dwarfs are observed with…
The small DAHe and DAe spectral classes comprise isolated, hydrogen-dominated atmosphere white dwarfs that exhibit variable photometric flux and Balmer line emission. These mysterious systems offer unique insight into the complex interplay…
Many white dwarfs are observed in compact double white dwarf binaries and, through the emission of gravitational waves, a large fraction are destined to merge. The merger remnants that do not explode in a Type Ia supernova are expected to…
White dwarf binaries are fundamental astrophysical probes. They represent ideal laboratories to test the models of binary evolution, which also apply to the sources of gravitational waves, whose detection led to the award of the 2017 Nobel…
Understanding the formation, evolution, and chemical diversity of exoplanets are now central areas of astrophysics research. White dwarfs provide a uniquely sensitive laboratory for studying the end stages of planetary-system evolution and…
Deriving precise stellar ages is a challenging task. Consequently, age-dependent relations - such as the age-metallicity and age-velocity dispersion relations of the Milky Way, or the age-rotation-activity relation of low-mass stars - are…
The ESA Gaia mission has revolutionized our understanding of the white dwarf population, delivering an unprecedented census of these nearby remnants and revealing previously unseen structures in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram.…
Many white dwarfs have accreted material from their own planetary systems. These objects can be used to infer the composition of exoplanetary material and identify evidence for key geological processes. However, the white dwarf atmospheric…
We present a substantial update to the MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) library, extending the MIST model grids and isochrones down the white dwarf (WD) cooling sequence with realistic physics for WD cooling timescales. This work…
Double degenerate white dwarf (WD) mergers can exhibit extreme magnetic fields exceeding $10^{8}$ G and rapid rotation, but their spectral-energy distributions and high-energy emission mechanisms remain poorly characterised. ZTF J1901+1458…
The fifth-generation Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) includes the first large-scale spectroscopic survey of white dwarfs (WDs) in the era of Gaia parallaxes. SDSS-V collects multiple exposures per target, making it ideal for binary…
Atmospheric carbon has been detected in the optical spectra of six hydrogen-rich ultra-massive white dwarfs, revealing large carbon abundances (log C/H > $-$0.5) attributable to the convective dredge-up of internal carbon into thin hydrogen…
Double white dwarf binaries are an important remnant of binary evolution as they are possible type Ia supernova progenitors and strong sources of gravitational waves in the low-frequency regime. The double-lined double white dwarf (DBL)…
Binaries of two white dwarfs (WDs) are an important class of astrophysical objects that are theorized to lead to Type Ia supernovae and are also used to gain insight into complex processes involved in stellar binary evolution. We report the…
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) is pioneering panoptic spectroscopy: it is the first all-sky, multi-epoch, optical-to-infrared spectroscopic survey. SDSS-V is mapping the sky with multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) at telescopes in…
We present the first discoveries of the double-lined double white dwarf (DBL) survey that targets over-luminous sources with respect to the canonical white dwarf cooling sequence according to a set of well-defined criteria. The primary goal…
Double white dwarf binaries are a leading explanation to the origin of type Ia supernovae, but no system exceeding the Chandrasekhar mass limit (1.4 M$_\odot$) has been found that will explode anywhere close to a Hubble time. Here, we…
We report the discovery of two new magnetic cataclysmic variables with brown dwarf companions and long orbital periods ($P_{\rm orb}=95\pm1$ and $104\pm2$ min). This discovery increases the sample of candidate magnetic period bouncers with…
We present a population synthesis model which addresses the different mass distributions of the metal-polluted and non-metal-polluted hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarfs identified in volume-limited samples. Specifically, metal-pollution has…