Related papers: Driving white dwarf metal pollution through unstab…
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…
Long-term instability in multi-planet exosystems is a crucial consideration when confirming putative candidates, analyzing exoplanet populations, constraining the age of exosystems, and identifying the sources of white dwarf pollution. Two…
We have discovered a detached pair of white dwarfs (WDs) with a 12.75 min orbital period and a 1,315 km/s radial velocity amplitude. We measure the full orbital parameters of the system using its light curve, which shows ellipsoidal…
The near-term search for life beyond the solar system currently focuses on transiting planets orbiting small M dwarfs, and the challenges of detecting signs of life in their atmospheres. However, planets orbiting white dwarfs (WDs) would…
This paper explores the stability of an Earth-like planet orbiting a solar-mass star in the presence of a stellar companion using ~ 400,000 numerical integrations. Given the chaotic nature of the systems being considered, we perform a…
White dwarf spectroscopy shows that nearly half of white dwarf atmospheres contain metals that must have been accreted from planetary material that survived the red giant phases of stellar evolution. We can use metal pollution in white…
Of the 21 known gaseous debris discs around white dwarfs, a large fraction of them display observational features that are well described by an eccentric distribution of gas. In the absence of embedded objects or additional forces, these…
A large sample of planet-planet scattering events for three planet systems with different orbital separations and masses is analyzed with a multiple regression model. The dependence of the time for the onset of instability on the masses of…
We present N-body simulations of resonant planets with inclined orbits that show chaotically evolving eccentricities and inclinations that can persist for at least 10 Gyr. A wide range of behavior is possible, from fast, low amplitude…
Approximately 25-50% of white dwarfs (WDs) exhibit metal absorption lines in their photospheres, which are attributed to accretion from their remnant planetary systems. Although white dwarfs with detected planetary systems are more likely…
Planetary systems commonly survive the evolution of single stars, as evidenced by terrestrial-like planetesimal debris observed orbiting and polluting the surfaces of white dwarfs. This letter reports the identification of a circumbinary…
The evolution of planetary systems around white dwarfs is crucial to understanding the presence of planetary material in the atmospheres of white dwarfs. These systems uniquely probe exoplanetary compositions. Periodic signals in the…
Do white dwarfs host asteroid systems? Although several lines of argument suggest that white dwarfs may be orbited by large populations of asteroids, transits would provide the most direct evidence. We demonstrate that the Kepler mission…
The presence of a planetary system can shield a planetesimal disk from the secular gravitational perturbations due to distant outer massive objects (planets or stellar companions). As the host star evolves off the main sequence to become a…
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 present a model to account for the observed debris disks around young white dwarfs and the presence of metal-lines in their spectra. Stellar evolution models predict that the mass-loss on the AGB will be pulsed; furthermore, observations…
Many white dwarf stars show signs of having accreted smaller bodies, implying that they may host planetary systems. A small number of these systems contain gaseous debris discs, visible through emission lines. We report a stable 123.4min…
Spectroscopic observations of some metal-rich white dwarfs (WDs), believed to be polluted by planetary material, reveal the presence of compact gaseous metallic disks orbiting them. The observed variability of asymmetric, double-peaked…
We present an efficient method for fast, complete, and accurate detection of unstable periodic orbits in chaotic systems. Our method consists of a new iterative scheme and an effective technique for selecting initial points. The iterative…
Nearly every star known to host planets will become a white dwarf, and nearly 100 planet-hosts are now known to be accompanied by binary stellar companions. Here, we determine how a binary companion triggers instability in otherwise…