Related papers: Does an Average White Dwarf Have Enough Mass to Pr…
Understanding how mass and angular momentum flow through accretion discs remains a fundamental unsolved problem in astrophysics. Accreting white dwarfs offer an ideal laboratory for addressing this question: their variability occurs on…
Spitzer Space Observatory IRAC and MIPS photometric observations are presented for 20 white dwarfs with T < 20,000 K and metal-contaminated photospheres. A warm circumstellar disk is detected at GD 16 and likely at PG 1457-086, while the…
Accretion disks around black hole, neutron star, and white dwarf systems are thought to sometimes tilt, retrogradely precess, and produce hump-shaped modulations in light curves that have a period shorter than the orbital period. Although…
A white dwarf (WD) approaching the Chandrasekhar mass may in several cases undergo accretion-induced collapse (AIC) to a neutron star (NS) before a thermonuclear explosion ensues. It has generally been assumed that AIC does not produce a…
We show that the recently developed thermal model which successfully describes how jets are launched by young stellar objects, when applied to system containing disk-accreting white dwarfs naturally explain the otherwise surprising absence…
White dwarfs (WDs) can increase their mass by accretion from companion stars, provided the mass-accretion rate is high enough to avoid nova eruptions. The accretion regimes that allow growth of the WDs are usually calculated assuming…
A significant fraction of white dwarfs show metal lines indicative of pollution with planetary material but the accretion process remains poorly understood. The main aim of this paper is to produce a road-map illustrating several potential…
Many astrophysical binaries, from planets to black holes, exert strong torques on their circumbinary accretion disks, and are expected to significantly modify the disk structure. Despite the several decade long history of the subject, the…
We report a broad-band analysis of a Galactic X-ray source, CXOGBS J174517.0-321356 (J1745), with a 614-second periodicity. Chandra discovered the source in the direction of the Galactic Bulge. Gong (2022) proposed J1745 was either an…
We briefly review recent developments in black hole accretion disk theory, placing new emphasis on the vital role played by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stresses in transporting angular momentum. The apparent universality of accretion-related…
We have performed a search for halo white dwarfs as high proper motion objects in a second epoch WFPC2 image of the Groth-Westphal strip. We identify 24 high proper motion objects with mu > 0.014 ''/yr. Five of these high proper motion…
The evolution of the magnetic field of an accreting magnetic white dwarf with an initially dipolar field at the surface has been studied for non-spherical accretion under simplifying assumptions. Accretion on to the polar regions tends to…
We study mass ejection from accretion disks formed in the merger of a white dwarf with a neutron star or black hole. These disks are mostly radiatively-inefficient and support nuclear fusion reactions, with ensuing outflows and…
A significant fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) exhibit signs of ongoing accretion of refractory elements at rates $\sim10^3$--$10^7$ kg s$^{-1}$, among which, 37 WDs were detected to harbor dusty debris disks. Such a concurrence requires not…
We compute mass outflow rates from advective accretion disks around compact objects, such as neutron stars and black holes. These computations, for the first time, are done using combinations of exact transonic inflow and outflow solutions…
We present Spitzer Space Telescope data of four isolated white dwarfs that were previously known to harbor circumstellar gaseous disks. IRAC photometry shows a significant infrared excess in all of the systems, SDSS0738+1835, SDSS0845+2257,…
Many isolated, old white dwarfs (WDs) show surprising evidence of metals in their photospheres. Given that the timescale for gravitational sedimentation is astronomically short, this is taken as evidence for ongoing accretion, likely of…
This letter reports statistically significant changes in the equivalent widths of MgII and CaII lines in the dusty and polluted white dwarf WD 0106-328, based on six epochs of spectroscopy using the VLT and Keck spanning 25 yr. Furthermore,…
Since the Fine Guiding Sensor (FGS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was used to measure the distance to SS Cyg to be $166\pm12$ pc, it became apparent that at this distance the disc instability model fails to explain the absolute…
Our recent theoretical work (Townsley and Bildsten 2002) on the thermal state of white dwarfs (WDs) in low mass transfer rate binaries allows us to predict the broadband colors of the binary from those of the WD and companion when the disk…