Related papers: The effects of diffusion in hot subdwarf progenito…
As they evolve, white dwarfs undergo major changes in surface composition, a phenomenon known as spectral evolution. In particular, some stars enter the cooling sequence with helium atmospheres (type DO) but eventually develop hydrogen…
Context: Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are considered to be core helium-burning stars with very thin hydrogen envelopes situated on or near the extreme horizontal branch (EHB). The formation of sdBs is still unclear as well as the chemical…
We study the evolution of a system composed by a 1.4 \msun neutron star and a normal, solar composition star of 2 \msun in orbit with a period of 1 day. Calculations were performed employing the binary hydro code presented in Benvenuto & De…
We perform stellar evolution calculations of the remnant of the merger of two He white dwarfs (WDs). Our initial conditions are taken from hydrodynamic simulations of double WD mergers and the viscous disc phase that follows. We evolve…
Stars with very large mass loss on the red-giant branch can undergo the helium flash while descending the white-dwarf cooling curve. Under these conditions the flash convection zone will mix the hydrogen envelope with the hot helium-…
Recent dramatic improvements in the modeling of abundance evolution due to diffusion in A stars have been achieved with the help of monochromatic opacity tables from the OPAL group. An important result in the context of stellar pulsations…
Hot subdwarf stars with masses above $0.8 M_\odot$ ascend the helium giant branch after the end of core helium burning, before entering the white dwarf cooling track or exploding as type Ib/c supernovae. Such massive helium stars are…
We revisit the problem of the formation of DB white dwarfs, as well as the origin of hydrogen in DBA stars, using a new set of envelope model calculations with stratified and mixed hydrogen/helium compositions. We first describe an…
Seismological observations with the Whole Earth Telescope (WET) allow the determination of the subsurface compositional structure of white dwarf stars. The hot DO PG 1159 has a helium surface layer with a mass of 0.001 Msun, while the…
We investigate the evolution of cooling helium atmosphere white dwarfs using a full evolutionary code, specifically developed for following the effects of element diffusion and gravitational settling on white dwarf cooling. The major…
As galaxy simulations increase in resolution more attention is being paid towards the evolution of dwarf galaxies and how the simulations compare to observations. Despite this increasing resolution we are however, far away from resolving…
We simulate the dynamical and chemical evolution of a dwarf galaxy embedded in a dark matter halo, using a three-dimensional N-body/SPH simulation code combined with stellar population synthesis. The initial condition is adopted in accord…
We investigate the possible impact of diffusion on the abundance of helium and other primordial elements during formation of the first structures in the early Universe. We consider the primary collapse of a perturbation and subsequent…
We present a study of the hypothesis that white dwarfs undergo a spectral change from hydrogen- to helium-dominated atmospheres using a volume-limited photometric sample drawn from the $Gaia$ DR2 catalogue, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey…
Some globular clusters host multiple stellar populations with different chemical abundance patterns. This is particularly true for $\omega$ Centauri, which shows clear evidence of a helium- enriched sub-population characterized by a helium…
We present a detailed spectroscopic analysis of 115 helium-line (DB) and 28 cool, He-rich hydrogen-line (DA) white dwarfs based on atmosphere fits to optical spectroscopy and photometry. We find that 63% of our DB population show hydrogen…
Stars consume hydrogen in their interiors but, generally speaking, their surfaces continue to contain some 70% hydrogen (by mass) throughout their lives. Nevertheless, many types of star can be found with hydrogen-deficient surfaces, in…
A large number of extremely low-mass helium white dwarfs (ELM WDs) have been discovered in recent years. The majority of them are found in close binary systems suggesting they are formed either through a common-envelope phase or via stable…
White dwarfs, the extremely dense remnants left behind by most stars after their death, are characterised by a mass comparable to that of the Sun compressed into the size of an Earth-like planet. In the resulting strong gravity, heavy…
The recent distance determinations by HIPPARCOS have allowed to locate very precisely a reasonable set of subdwarfs in the HR diagram. A detailed comparison with evolutionary models is now possible and it has been recently claimed that the…