Related papers: Cooling Models for the Most Massive White Dwarfs

Brown dwarf spectra are rich in information revealing of the chemical and physical processes operating in their atmospheres. We apply a recently developed atmospheric retrieval tool to an ensemble of late T-dwarf (600-800K) near infrared…

The discovery of pulsations in ultra-massive white dwarfs can help to probe their interiors and unveil their core composition and crystallized mass fraction through asteroseismic techniques. To date, the richest pulsating ultra-massive…

Atmospheric carbon has been detected in the optical spectra of six hydrogen-rich ultra-massive white dwarfs, revealing large carbon abundances (log C/H > $-$0.5) attributable to the convective dredge-up of internal carbon into thin hydrogen…

Supernova cooling has long been used to constrain physics beyond the Standard Model, typically involving new mediators or dark matter (DM) particles that couple to nucleons or electrons. In this work, we show that the large density of…

Here, we present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 15 helium atmosphere, metal-rich white dwarfs obtained at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. While a connection has been demonstrated between the most highly polluted, hydrogen…

Recent observations show that chromospheric activity in late-M and L dwarfs is much lower than in the earlier M types, in spite of comparatively rapid rotation. We investigate the possibility that this drop-off in activity results from the…

Four years after the discovery of a unique DAQ white dwarf with a hydrogen-dominated and carbon-rich atmosphere, we report the discovery of four new DAQ white dwarfs, including two that were not recognized properly in the literature. We…

We present a 20-pc, volume-limited sample of M7-L8 dwarfs created through spectroscopic follow-up of sources selected from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Second Incremental Release Point Source Catalog. In this paper, we present…

The evolution of white dwarfs (WDs) depends crucially on thermal processes. The plasma in their core can produce neutrinos which escape from the star, thus contributing to the energy loss. While in absence of a magnetic field the main…

Over the past few years monitoring programs have shown ultra cool dwarfs (UCDs) to be photometrically variable. Of the 60 sources monitored in the field and some 120 monitored in clusters, about 40% show variability in both cases. For mid…

The discovery of a low luminosity common proper motion companion to the white dwarf GD392 at a wide separation of $46''$ is reported. $BVRI$ photometry suggests a low temperature ($T_{\rm eff}\sim4000$ K) while $JHK$ data strongly indicate…

The cooling of a compact star depends very sensitively on the state of dense matter at supranuclear densities, which essentially controls the neutrino emission, as well as on the structure of the stellar outer layers which control the…

The Hubble Space Telescope observation of the double white dwarf (WD) binary SDSS J125733.63$+$542850.5 reveal that the massive WD has a surface gravity log$g_1\sim8.7$ (which implies a mass of $M_1\sim1.06~{\rm M_\odot}$) and an effective…

As the descendants of stars with masses less than 8 M$_{\odot}$ on the main sequence, white dwarfs provide a unique way to constrain planetary occurrence around intermediate-mass stars (spectral types BAF) that are otherwise difficult to…

We present a series of systematic abundance measurements for 89 hydrogen atmosphere (DA-type) white dwarfs with temperatures spanning 16000-77000K drawn from the FUSE spectral archive. This is the largest study to date of white dwarfs where…

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…

The merger of two carbon-oxygen white dwarfs can lead either to a spectacular transient, stable nuclear burning or a massive, rapidly rotating white dwarf. Simulations of mergers have shown that the outcome strongly depends on whether the…

It was predicted more than 40 years ago that the cores of the coolest white dwarf stars should eventually crystallize. This effect is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in white dwarf cooling models, which are now routinely used to…

Optical spectroscopic observations of white dwarf stars selected from catalogs based on the Gaia DR2 database reveal nine new gaseous debris disks that orbit single white dwarf stars, about a factor of two increase over the previously known…

We present Hubble Space Telescope UV spectra of the 4.6 h period double white dwarf SDSS J125733.63+542850.5. Combined with Sloan Digital Sky Survey optical data, these reveal that the massive white dwarf (secondary) has an effective…