Related papers: Understanding the Oldest White Dwarfs: Atmospheres…
Over the last decade {\it ab initio} modeling of material properties has become widespread in diverse fields of research. It has proved to be a powerful tool for predicting various properties of matter under extreme conditions. We apply…
The atmospheres of cool, helium-rich white dwarfs constitute an exotic and poorly explored physical regime of stellar atmospheres. Under physical conditions where the temperature varies from $\rm 1000K$ to $\rm 10000K$, the density can…
Cool white dwarfs with Teff < 6000 K are the remnants of the oldest stars that existed in our Galaxy. Their atmospheres, when properly characterized, can provide valuable information on white dwarf evolution and ultimately star formation…
The photospheres of the coolest helium-atmosphere white dwarfs are characterized by fluid-like densities. Under those conditions, standard approximations used in model atmosphere codes are no longer appropriate. Unfortunately, the majority…
As a result of competing physical mechanisms, the atmospheric composition of white dwarfs changes throughout their evolution, a process known as spectral evolution. Because of the ambiguity of their atmospheric compositions and the…
We present a set of full evolutionary sequences for white dwarfs with hydrogen-deficient atmospheres. We take into account the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars, all the relevant energy sources involved in the cooling, element…
Atmospheric parameters for hot DB (helium atmosphere) white dwarfs near effective temperatures of 25000K are extremely difficult to determine from optical spectroscopy. This is particularly unfortunate, because this is the range of variable…
Due to their high photospheric density, cool helium-rich white dwarfs (particularly DZ, DQpec and ultracool) are often poorly described by current atmosphere models. As part of our ongoing efforts to design atmosphere models suitable for…
We present a detailed calculation of model atmospheres for DA white dwarfs. Our atmosphere code solves the atmosphere structure in local thermodynamic equilibrium with a standard partial linearization technique, which takes into account the…
We investigate the evolution of cooling helium atmosphere white dwarfs using a full evolutionary code, specifically developed for following the effects of element diffusion and gravitational settling on white dwarf cooling. The major…
We present new cooling sequences, color-magnitude diagrams, and color-color diagrams for cool white dwarfs with pure hydrogen atmospheres down to an effective temperature $\te=1500$ K. We include a more detailed treatment of the physics of…
We present new white dwarf cooling models which incorporate an accurate outer boundary condition based on new opacity and detailed radiative transfer calculations. We find that helium atmosphere dwarfs cool considerably faster than has…
A detailed analysis of the very cool white dwarfs SDSS 1337+00 and LHS 3250 is presented. Model atmosphere calculations with improved collision-induced absorptions by molecular hydrogen indicate that a pure hydrogen composition can be ruled…
A number of so-called ultra-cool white dwarfs have been detected in different surveys so far. However, based on anecdotal evidence it is believed that most or all of these ultra-cool white dwarfs are low-mass products of binary evolution…
Microlensing events observed in the line of sight toward the LMC indicate that a significant fraction of the mass of the dark halo of the Galaxy is probably composed of white dwarfs. In addition, white dwarf sequences have now be observed…
White dwarf evolution is essentially a gravothermal cooling process, which,for cool white dwarfs, sensitively depends on the treatment of the outer boundary conditions. We provide detailed outer boundary conditions appropriate for computing…
The asteroseismic analysis of white dwarfs allows us to peer below their photospheres and determine their internal structure. At ~ 28,000 K EC20058-5234 is the hottest known pulsating helium atmosphere white dwarf. As such, it constitutes…
White dwarfs are the dense, burnt-out remnants of the vast majority of stars, condemned to cool over billions of years as they steadily radiate away their residual thermal energy. To first order, their atmosphere is expected to be made…
Dense, He-rich atmospheres of cool white dwarfs represent a challenge to the modeling. This is because these atmospheres are constituted of a dense fluid in which strong multi-atomic interactions determine their physics and chemistry.…
We report new infrared spectroscopic observations of cool DQ white dwarfs by using Coolspec on the 2.7m Harlan-Smith Telescope. DQs have helium-rich atmospheres with traces of molecular carbon thought to be the result of convective…