Related papers: White dwarf spins from low mass stellar evolution …
Rotation and magnetism are increasingly recognized as important phenomena in stellar evolution. Surface magnetic fields from a few to $20{,}000\,$G have been observed and models have suggested that magnetohydrodynamic transport of angular…
White dwarfs rotate. The angular momentum in single white dwarfs must originate early in the life of the star, but also must be modified (and perhaps severely modified) during the many stages of evolution between birth as a main--sequence…
It has long been accepted that a possible mechanism for explaining the existence of magnetic white dwarfs is the merger of a binary white dwarf system, as there are viable mechanisms for producing sustainable magnetic fields within the…
We investigate the evolution of isolated, zero and finite temperature, massive, uniformly rotating and highly magnetized white dwarf stars under angular momentum loss driven by magnetic dipole braking. We consider the structure and thermal…
Rotation has a number of important effects on the evolution of stars. It decreases the surface gravity, causes enhanced mass loss and leads to surface abundance anomalies of various chemical isotopes. We have adapted the Cambridge stellar…
Recent surveys of close white dwarf binaries as well as single white dwarfs have provided evidence for the late appearance of magnetic fields in white dwarfs, and a possible generation mechanism a crystallization and rotation-driven dynamo…
Surveys of young star-forming regions have discovered a growing population of planetary-mass (<13 M_Jup) companions around young stars. There is an ongoing debate as to whether these companions formed like planets (that is, from the…
The evolution of angular momentum is a key to our understanding of star formation and stellar evolution. The rotational evolution of solar-mass stars is mostly controlled by magnetic interaction with the circumstellar disc and angular…
While brown dwarfs show similarities with stars in their early life, their spin evolution is much more akin to that of planets. We have used lightcurves from the K2 mission to measure new rotation periods for 18 young brown dwarfs in the…
I discuss and consider the status of observational determinations of the rotation velocities of white dwarf stars via asteroseismology and spectroscopy. While these observations have important implications on our understanding of the…
The origin of magnetic fields in white dwarfs remains a fundamental unresolved problem in stellar astrophysics. In particular, the very different fractions of strongly (exceeding 1 MG) magnetic white dwarfs in evolutionarily linked…
We examine the statistics of main-sequence / main-sequence, main-sequence / white-dwarf and white-dwarf / white-dwarf wide binaries at 10^2.5-10^4 AU separations in Gaia data. For binaries containing a white dwarf, we find a complex…
There are no known examples of magnetic white dwarfs with fields larger than about 3MG paired with a non-degenerate companion in detached binary systems. The suggestion is that highly magnetic, isolated white dwarfs may originate from stars…
Most of low- and intermediate-mass stars that populate the Universe will end their lives as white dwarf stars. These ancient stellar remnants have encrypted inside a precious record of the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars,…
We consider the evolution of white dwarfs with compact object companions (specifically black holes with masses up to 10^6 solar masses, neutron stars, and other white dwarfs). We suppose that the orbits are initially quite elliptical and…
We provide a fine and homogeneous grid of evolutionary sequences for He-core white dwarfs with masses 0.15-0.45 Msun, including the mass range for ELM white dwarfs (<0.20Msun). The grid is appropriate for mass and age determination, and to…
Context. We need to understand the spin evolution of massive stars to compute their internal rotationally induced mixing processes, isolate effects of close binary evolution, and predict the rotation rates of white dwarfs, neutron stars and…
One of the characteristic features of low-mass stars is their propensity to shed large amounts of angular momentum throughout their evolution. This distinguishs them from brown dwarfs which remain fast rotators over timescales of gigayears.…
I argue that the rotation of white dwarfs is not a remnant of the angular momentum of their main sequence progenitors but a result of the mass loss process on the AGB. Weak magnetic fields, if present in stellar interiors, are likely to…
High precision photometry and spectroscopy of low-mass stars reveal a variety of properties standard stellar evolution cannot predict. Rotation, an essential ingredient of stellar evolution, is a step towards resolving the discrepancy…