Related papers: Gaseous Debris Disks around White Dwarfs

Many white dwarfs host disks of dust produced by disintegrating planetesimals and revealed by infrared excesses. The disk around G29-38 was the first to be discovered and is now well-observed, yet we lack a cohesive picture of its geometry…

Practically all known planet hosts will evolve into white dwarfs, and large parts of their planetary systems will survive this transition - the same is true for the solar system beyond the orbit of Mars. Spectroscopy of white dwarfs…

This review chapter for young researchers presents our current understanding of debris discs. It introduces some of their basic properties and observables, and describes how we think they form and collisionally evolve. Special emphasis is…

We have carried out $JHK_s$ imaging of 12 white dwarf debris disk candidates from the WIRED SDSS DR7 catalog, aiming to confirm or rule out disks among these sources. On the basis of positional identification and the flux density spectra,…

Debris disks are optically thin, almost gas-free dusty disks observed around a significant fraction of main-sequence stars older than about 10 Myr. Since the circumstellar dust is short-lived, the very existence of these disks is considered…

Debris disks around single white dwarfs are thought to be the remains of planetary bodies disrupted by tidal forces. Ongoing accretion of the hereby produced dust allows to detect the planetary material in the white dwarf photosphere and to…

A significant fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) host dust/debris disks formed from the tidal disruption of asteroids and planetesimals. Several studies indicate that the disks can attain significant vertical heights through collisional…

A growing sample of white dwarfs (WDs) with metal-enriched atmospheres are accompanied by excess infrared emission, indicating that they are encircled by a compact dusty disk of solid debris. Such `WD debris disks' are thought to originate…

Studies of excess infrared radiation around white dwarfs provide important constraints on the evolution of planetary systems and low-mass stars beyond the main sequence stage. In this paper series, we focus on identifying and characterizing…

Nearly all known white dwarf planetary systems contain detectable rocky debris in the stellar photosphere. A glaring exception is the young and still evolving white dwarf WD J0914+1914, which instead harbours a giant planet and a disc of…

We present ISAAC spectroscopy and ISAAC, UKIDSS and Spitzer Space Telescope broad-band photometry of SDSS J1228+1040 -- a white dwarf for which evidence of a gaseous metal-rich circumstellar disk has previously been found from optical…

Debris disks are exoplanetary systems containing planets, minor bodies (such as asteroids and comets) and debris dust. Unseen planets are presumed to perturb the minor bodies into crossing orbits, generating small dust grains that are…

This second paper presents an in-depth analysis of the composition of the planetary material that has been accreted onto seven white dwarfs with circumstellar dust and gas emission discs with abundances reported in Paper I. The white dwarfs…

This White Paper, submitted to the National Academy of Sciences' Astro2010 Decadal Review Committee, focuses on 2 central themes in the study of young brown dwarfs -- their formation mechanism and disk characteristics -- which are of direct…

Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…

'Debris disks' are collections of small bodies around stars, such as the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt in our Solar System. These disks are composed of objects smaller than planets, including asteroids, comets, dust, and dwarf planets. We…

At present, a large number of pulsating white dwarf (WD) stars is being discovered either from Earth-based surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or through observations from space (e.g., the Kepler mission). The asteroseismological…

We report the discovery of excess K-band radiation from a massive DAZ white dwarf star, GD362. Combining infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations, we show that the excess radiation cannot be explained by a stellar or substellar…

We present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 20 previously known DAZ white dwarfs obtained at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Two of these white dwarfs (G29-38 and GD362) are known to display significant K-band excesses due…

IR excesses of white dwarfs (WDs) can be used to diagnose the presence of low-mass companions, planets, and circumstellar dust. Using different combinations of wavelengths and WD temperatures, circumstellar dust at different radial…