Related papers: A Circumbinary Debris Disk in a Polluted White Dwa…
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…
As the descendants of stars with masses less than 8 M$_{\odot}$ on the main sequence, white dwarfs provide a unique way to constrain planetary occurrence around intermediate-mass stars (spectral types BAF) that are otherwise difficult to…
The formation channel of the tens of compact debris discs which orbit white dwarfs (WDs) at a distance of one Solar radius remains unknown. Asteroids that survive the giant branch stellar phases beyond a few au are assumed to be dynamically…
Recent observations have revealed that protoplanetary discs often exhibit cavities and azimuthal asymmetries such as dust traps and clumps. The presence of a stellar binary system in the inner disc regions has been proposed to explain the…
Several tens of white dwarfs are known to host circumstellar discs of dusty debris, thought to arise from the tidal disruption of rocky bodies originating in the star's remnant planetary system. This paper investigates the evolution of such…
The presence of planets in binary systems poses interesting problems for planet formation theories, both in cases where planets must have formed in very compact discs around the individual stars and where they are located near the edge of…
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 planetary systems provide a unique way to measure the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. Extrasolar asteroids/comets/moons which have survived the evolution of their host star can end up in the atmosphere of the white…
This paper presents combined ${\it Spitzer}$ IRAC and ${\it Hubble}$ COS results for a double-blind survey of 195 single and 22 wide binary white dwarfs for infrared excesses and atmospheric metals. The selection criteria include cooling…
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 study presents all available, multi-epoch 3.6 and 4.5 $\mu$m photometry from Spitzer Space Telescope observations of white dwarf debris disks, including weekly cadence observations of 16 relatively bright systems, and 5 h staring-mode…
The environment of a binary star system may contain two circumstellar disks, one orbiting each of the stars, and a circumbinary disk orbiting about the entire binary. The disk structure and evolution are modified by the presence of the…
The presence of planets around solar-type stars suggests that many white dwarfs should have relic planetary systems. While planets closer than $\sim$ 5~AU will most likely not survive the post-main sequence lifetime of its parent star, any…
Dynamical activity attributed to the destruction of minor planets orbiting white dwarfs has now been photometrically monitored in individual systems for up to one decade, long enough to measure significant cessation and re-emergence of…
Spitzer IRAC observations of 15 metal-polluted white dwarfs reveal infrared excesses in the spectral energy distributions of HE 0110-5630, GD 61, and HE 1349-2305. All three of these stars have helium-dominated atmospheres, and their…
At least 25% of white dwarfs show atmospheric pollution by metals, sometimes accompanied by detectable circumstellar dust/gas discs or (in the case of WD 1145+017) transiting disintegrating asteroids. Delivery of planetesimals to the white…
Virtually all binaries consisting of a white dwarf with a non-degenerate companion can be classified as either close post-interaction systems (with orbital periods of a few days or less), or wide systems (with periods longer than decades),…
Close to the Roche radius of a white dwarf (WD), an asteroid on a circular orbit sheds material that then adopts a very similar orbit. Observations of the resulting debris show a periodic behavior and changes in flux on short timescales,…
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the…
The suite of over 60 known planetary debris discs which orbit white dwarfs, along with detections of multiple minor planets in these systems, motivate investigations about the migration properties of planetesimals embedded within the discs.…