Related papers: Linking long-term planetary $N$-body simulations w…
Atmospheric heavy elements have been observed in more than a quarter of white dwarfs (WDs) at different cooling ages, indicating ongoing accretion of asteroidal material, whilst only a few per cent of the WDs possess a dust disk, and all…
We investigate the origin of close-in planets and related phenomena orbiting white dwarfs (WDs), which are thought to originate from orbits more distant from the star. We use the planetary architectures of the 75 multiple-planet systems…
It has long been suspected that metal polluted white dwarfs (types DAZ, DBZ, and DZ) and white dwarfs with dusty disks possess planetary systems, but a specific physical mechanism by which planetesimals are perturbed close to a white dwarf…
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…
Debris discs consist of belts of bodies ranging in size from dust grains to planetesimals; these belts are visible markers of planetary systems around other stars that can reveal the influence of extrasolar planets through their shape and…
The metal budgets in some white dwarf (WD) atmospheres reveal that volatile-rich circumstellar bodies must both exist in extrasolar systems and survive the giant branch phases of stellar evolution. The resulting behaviour of these active…
We have investigated planetary accretion from planetesimals in terrestrial planet regions inside the ice line around M dwarf stars through N-body simulations including tidal interactions with disk gas. Because of low luminosity of M dwarfs,…
A widely-held assumption is that each single white dwarf containing observable rocky debris requires the presence of at least one terrestrial or giant planet to have gravitationally perturbed the progenitor of the debris into the star.…
White dwarf (WD) pollution is thought to arise from the tidal disruption of planetary bodies. The initial fragment stream is extremely eccentric, while observational evidence suggest that discs are circular or nearly so. Here we propose a…
Context: We studied numerically the formation of giant planet (GP) and brown dwarf (BD) embryos in gravitationally unstable protostellar disks and compared our findings with directly-imaged, wide-orbit (>= 50 AU) companions known to-date.…
Objects transiting near or within the disruption radius of both main sequence (e.g. KOI 1843) and white dwarf (WD 1145+017) stars are now known. Upon fragmentation or disintegration, these planets or asteroids may produce co-orbital…
At intervals as short as ten thousand years, each white dwarf (WD) passes within a solar radius of a planetoid, i.e., a comet, asteroid, or planet. Gravitational tidal forces tear the planetoid apart; its metal-rich debris falls onto the…
White dwarfs (WDs) showing transits from orbiting planetary debris provide significant insights into the structure and dynamics of debris disks. This is a rare class of objects with only eight published systems. In this work, we perform a…
This paper investigates the frequency of transiting planetary systems around metal-polluted white dwarfs using high-cadence photometry from ULTRACAM and ULTRASPEC on the ground, and space-based observations with TESS. Within a sample of 313…
Numerical simulations are a crucial tool to understand the relationship between debris discs and planetary companions. However, simulations throughout the literature have been conducted with various initial conditions often with little or…
Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks with large and deep central holes in the gas, possibly carved by young planets. Dong, R., & Dawson, R. 2016, ApJ, 825, 7 simulated systems with multiple giant planets that were capable of carving…
Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ~30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium,…
A quarter of DA white dwarfs are metal polluted, yet elements heavier than helium sink down through the stellar atmosphere on timescales of days. Hence, these white dwarfs must be currently accreting material containing heavy elements.…
White dwarfs are routinely observed to have polluted atmospheres, and sometimes significant infrared excesses, that indicate ongoing accretion of circumstellar dust and rocky debris. Typically this debris is assumed to be in the form of a…
Metal pollution in white dwarf photospheres originates from the accretion of some combination of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, boulders, pebbles and dust. When large bodies reside in dynamically stagnant locations -- unable themselves…