Related papers: On Thermohaline Mixing in Accreting White Dwarfs
Heavy elements are observed in the atmospheres of many DA and DB white dwarfs, and their presence is attributed to the accretion of matter coming from debris disks. Several authors have deduced accretion rates from the observed abundances,…
Recent observations of a large number of DA and DB white dwarfs show evidence of debris disks, which are the remnants of old planetary systems. The infrared excess detected with \emph{Spitzer} and the lines of heavy elements observed in…
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…
A non negligible fraction of white dwarf stars show the presence of heavy elements in their atmospheres. The most accepted explanation for this contamination is the accretion of material coming from tidally disrupted planetesimals, which…
A large fraction of white dwarf stars shows photospheric chemical composition polluted by heavy elements accreted from a debris disk. Such debris disks result from the tidal disruption of rocky planetesimals which had survived to whole…
Fingering convection (or thermohaline convection) is a weak yet important kind of mixing that occurs in stably-stratified stellar radiation zones in the presence of an inverse mean-molecular-weight gradient. Brown et al. (2013) recently…
Accurate models of cooling white dwarfs must treat the energy released as their cores crystallize. This phase transition slows the cooling by releasing latent heat and also gravitational energy, which results from phase separation: liquid C…
Many isolated white dwarfs (WDs) show spectral evidence of atmospheric metal pollution. Since heavy element sedimentation timescales are short, this most likely indicates ongoing accretion. Accreted metals encounter a variety of mixing…
Polluted white dwarfs (WDs) with small surface convection zones deposit significant concentrations of heavy elements to the underlying radiative interior, presumably driving thermohaline convection. Current models of polluted WDs frequently…
Due to the short settling times of metals in DA white dwarf atmospheres, any white dwarfs with photospheric metals must be actively accreting. It is therefore natural to expect that the metals may not be deposited uniformly on the surface…
One of the challenges to increasing the mass of a white dwarf through accretion is the tendency for the accumulating hydrogen to ignite unstably and potentially trigger mass loss. It has been known for many years that there is a narrow…
White dwarfs are almost completely degenerate objects that cannot obtain energy from thermonuclear sources, so their evolution is just a gravothermal cooling process. Recent improvements in the accuracy and precision of the luminosity…
Field-channelled accretion flows occur in a variety of astrophysical objects, including T Tauri stars,magnetic cataclysmic variables and X-ray pulsars. We consider a curvilinear coordinate system and derive a general hydrodynamic…
Fingering convection is a turbulent mixing process that can occur in stellar radiative regions whenever the mean molecular weight increases with radius. In some cases, it can have a significant observable impact on stellar structure and…
Double-diffusive instabilities are often invoked to explain enhanced transport in stably-stratified fluids. The most-studied natural manifestation of this process, fingering convection, commonly occurs in the ocean's thermocline and…
The early evolution of planetary systems is expected to depend on various periods of disk matter accretion onto the central star, which may include the accretion of metal-rich matter after the star settles on the main sequence. When this…
Much progress has recently been made in understanding and quantifying vertical mixing induced by double-diffusive instabilities such as fingering convection (usually called thermohaline convection) and oscillatory double-diffusive…
In a previous paper, we presented the global solution of a new accretion flow model, namely luminous hot accretion flows (LHAFs). In this {\em Letter}, we first show the corresponding thermal equilibrium curve of LHAFs in the mass accretion…
White dwarfs experience a thermal renaissance when they receive mass from a stellar companion in a binary. For accretion rates < 10^-8 Msun/yr, the freshly accumulated hydrogen/helium envelope ignites in a thermally unstable manner that…
A hydrodynamic formulation for accretion flow channeled by a dipolar magnetic field is constructed using a curvi-linear coordinate system natural to the field structure. We solve the hydrodynamic equations and determine the velocity,…