Related papers: Multi-Gigayear White Dwarf Cooling Delays from Clu…
We enhance the treatment of crystallization for models of white dwarfs (WDs) in the stellar evolution software MESA by implementing carbon-oxygen (C/O) phase separation. The phase separation process during crystallization leads to transport…
Recently, the power of Gaia data has revealed an enhancement of high-mass white dwarfs (WDs) on the Hertzsprung--Russell diagram, called the Q branch. This branch is located at the high-mass end of the recently identified crystallization…
Recent observations of Galactic white dwarfs (WDs) with Gaia suggest there is a population of massive crystallizing WDs exhibiting anomalous cooling -- the Q branch. While single-particle $^{22}$Ne sedimentation has long been considered a…
The precise astrometric measurements of the Gaia Data Release 2 have opened the door to detailed tests of the predictions of white dwarf cooling models. Significant discrepancies between theory and observations have been identified, the…
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…
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…
A deep imaging survey covering the entire $23\arcmin$ diameter of the old open cluster M67 to $V = 25$ has been carried out using the mosaic imager (UHCam) on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The cluster color-magnitude diagram (CMD) can…
White Dwarfs (WDs) are the final evolutionary product of the vast majority of stars in the Universe. They are electron-degenerate structures characterized by no stable thermonuclear activity, and their evolution is generally described as a…
White dwarfs are stellar embers depleted of nuclear energy sources that cool over billions of years. These stars, which are supported by electron degeneracy pressure, reach densities of 1e7 grams per cubic centimetre in their cores. It has…
The continuous cooling of a white dwarf is punctuated by events that affect its cooling rate. Probably the most significant of those is the crystallization of its core, a phase transition that occurs once the C/O interior has cooled down…
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…
Recent Monte Carlo plasma simulations to study in crystallizing carbon-oxygen (CO) white dwarfs (WDs) the phase separation of Ne22 (the most abundant metal after carbon and oxygen) have shown that, under the right conditions, a distillation…
We have used deep HST WFPC2 observations of two fields in NGC 2420 to produce a cluster CMD down to V = 27. After imposing morphological selection criteria we find eight candidate white dwarfs in NGC 2420. Our completeness estimates…
We analysed the cooling of white dwarfs in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae using deep observations from the Hubble Space Telescope that resolve the white dwarf cooling sequence to late enough cooling times that the white dwarf core has…
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…
Accurate models of cooling white dwarfs must treat the energy released as their cores crystallize. This phase transition slows the cooling by releasing latent heat and also gravitational energy, which results from phase separation: liquid C…
Do white dwarfs have inner cores made of iron? Neutron rich nuclei like $^{56}$Fe experience a net gravitational force and sediment toward the core. Using new phase diagrams and molecular dynamics simulations, we show that $^{56}$Fe should…
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…
We assess the impact of the trace element ^{22}Ne on the cooling and seismology of a liquid C/O white dwarf (WD). Due to this elements' neutron excess, it sinks towards the interior as the liquid WD cools. The subsequent gravitational…