Related papers: New Conductive Opacities for White Dwarf Envelopes
Given the importance of white dwarfs (WDs) in many fields of modern astrophysics, the precise knowledge of the actual degree of accuracy of the associated theoretical predictions is a primary task. In the first paper of a series dedicated…
White Dwarf luminosities are powerful age indicators, whose calibration should be based on reliable models. We discuss the uncertainty of some chemical and physical parameters and their influence on the age estimated by means of white dwarf…
Cool white dwarfs are reliable and independent stellar chronometers. The most common white dwarfs have carbon-oxygen dense cores. Consequently, the cooling ages of very cool white dwarfs sensitively depend on the adopted phase diagram of…
Sufficiently old white dwarfs cool down through a convective envelope that directly couples their degenerate cores to the surface. Magnetic fields may inhibit this convection by stiffening the criterion for convective instability. We…
An accurate assessment of white dwarf cooling times is paramount to place white dwarf cosmochronology of Galactic populations on more solid grounds. This issue is particularly relevant in view of the enhanced observational capabilities…
The evolution of white dwarfs is essentially a cooling process that depends primarily on the energy stored in their degenerate cores and on the transparency of their envelopes. In this paper we compute accurate cooling sequences for…
Deriving precise stellar ages is a challenging task. Consequently, age-dependent relations - such as the age-metallicity and age-velocity dispersion relations of the Milky Way, or the age-rotation-activity relation of low-mass stars - are…
Electron conduction opacities are one of the main physics inputs for the calculation of low- and intermediate-mass stellar models, and a critical question is how to bridge calculations for moderate and strong degeneracy, which are…
We present new white dwarf cooling models which incorporate an accurate outer boundary condition based on new opacity and detailed radiative transfer calculations. We find that helium atmosphere dwarfs cool considerably faster than has…
The white dwarfs are promising laboratories for the study of cosmochronology and stellar evolution. Through observations of the pulsating white dwarfs, we can measure their internal structures and compositions, critical to understanding…
Cooling ages of white dwarfs are routinely determined by mapping effective temperatures and masses to ages using evolutionary models. Typically, the reported uncertainties on cooling ages only consider the error propagation of the…
We investigate the luminosity and cooling of highly magnetized white dwarfs with electron-degenerate cores and non-degenerate surface layers where cooling occurs by diffusion of photons. We find the temperature and density profiles in the…
We carried out a spectroscopic investigation of single lined white dwarfs (WDs) in double degenerate (DD) systems and discuss their binary evolution. Simulated spectra of the Halpha region are used to derive upper limits on the temperature…
We present full evolutionary calculations appropriate for the study of hydrogen-rich DA white dwarfs. This is done by evolving white dwarf progenitors from the zero age main sequence, through the core hydrogen burning phase, the helium…
White dwarf evolution is essentially a gravothermal cooling process, which,for cool white dwarfs, sensitively depends on the treatment of the outer boundary conditions. We provide detailed outer boundary conditions appropriate for computing…
Using a new grid of models of cooling white dwarfs, we calculate isochrones and luminosity functions in the Johnson-Kron/Cousins and HST filter sets for systems containing old white dwarfs. These new models incorporate a non-grey atmosphere…
We present new cooling sequences, color-magnitude diagrams, and color-color diagrams for cool white dwarfs with pure hydrogen atmospheres down to an effective temperature $\te=1500$ K. We include a more detailed treatment of the physics of…
We investigate in detail the white dwarf cooling sequence of the globular cluster Messier 4. In particular we study the influence of various systematic uncertainties, both observational and theoretical, on the determination of the cluster…
White dwarfs (WDs) offer unrealized potential in solving two problems in astrophysics: stellar age accuracy and precision. WD cooling ages can be inferred from surface temperatures and radii, which can be constrained with precision by high…
We present follow-up spectroscopy and a detailed model atmosphere analysis of 29 wide double white dwarfs, including eight systems with a crystallized C/O core member. We use state-of-the-art evolutionary models to constrain the physical…