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Many potential mechanisms for delivering planetary debris to within a few Roche radii of white dwarfs rely on gravitational scattering events that feature perturbers which are giant planets or terrestrial planets. However, the population of…
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…
Planets and other low-mass binary companions to stars face a variety of potential fates as their host stars move off the main sequence and grow to subgiants and giants. Stellar mass loss tends to make orbits expand, and tidal torques tend…
The evolution of binaries that become double white dwarf (DWD) can cause the ejection of high amounts of dust and gas. Such material can give rise to circumbinary discs and become the cradle of new planets, yet no studies so far have…
The asteroid belt was dynamically shaped during and after planet formation. Despite representing a broad ring of stable orbits, the belt contains less than one one-thousandth of an Earth mass. The asteroid orbits are dynamically excited…
Most of low- and intermediate-mass stars that populate the Universe will end their lives as white dwarf stars. These ancient stellar remnants have encrypted inside a precious record of the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars,…
This second paper presents an in-depth analysis of the composition of the planetary material that has been accreted onto seven white dwarfs with circumstellar dust and gas emission discs with abundances reported in Paper I. The white dwarfs…
As stars evolve, they undergo significant changes in their physical properties, which can have a profound impact on the planets orbiting them. In particular, the mass lost through stellar wind may be partially accreted by orbiting planets.…
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…
Only a handful of gas giant planets orbiting white dwarfs are known. It remains unclear whether this paucity reflects observational challenges or the consequences of stellar evolution. We aim to carry out population synthesis of substellar…
This paper explores how the stochastic accretion of planetesimals onto white dwarfs would be manifested in observations of their atmospheric pollution. Archival observations of pollution levels for unbiased samples of DA and non-DA white…
A large fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) have metal-polluted atmospheres, which are produced by accreting material from remnant planetary systems. The composition of the accreted debris broadly resembles that of rocky Solar System objects.…
With the goal of using externally-polluted white dwarfs to investigate the water fractions of extrasolar planetesimals, we assemble from the literature a sample that we estimate to be more than 60% complete of DB white dwarfs warmer than…
Recent infrared observations have revealed presence of compact (radii < R_Sun) debris disks around more than a dozen of metal-rich white dwarfs (WD), likely produced by tidal disruption of asteroids. Accretion of high-Z material from these…
A large fraction of stars are formed in dense clusters. In the cluster, close encounters between stars at distances less than 100 au are common. It has been shown that during close encounters planets can transfer between stars. Such…
Recent observations point to the presence of structured dust grains in the discs surrounding young brown dwarfs, thus implying that the first stages of planet formation take place also in the sub-stellar regime. Here, we investigate the…
Over one quarter of white dwarfs contain observable metallic debris from the breakup of exo-asteroids. Understanding the physical and orbital history of this debris would enable us to self-consistently link planetary system formation and…
A large proportion of observed white dwarfs (WDs) show evidence of debris disks, remnants of the former planetary systems, and/or signatures of heavy elements in their atmospheres, induced by the accretion of planetary matter onto their…
We perform $N$-body simulations of star clusters in time-dependant galactic potentials. Since the Milky Way was built-up through mergers with dwarf galaxies, its globular cluster population is made up of clusters formed both during the…
High-metallicity pollution is common in white dwarf (WD) stars hosting remnant planetary systems. However, they rarely have detectable debris accretion discs, possibly because much of the influx is fast steeply-infalling debris in…