Related papers: Phase Separation in Ultramassive White Dwarfs
Based on the linear mixing approach, we calculate the latent heat for crystallizing fully-ionized $^{12}$C/$^{16}$O and $^{16}$O/$^{20}$Ne mixtures in white dwarf (WD) cores for two different parametrizations of the corrections to the…
The astrophysical origins of the heaviest stable elements that we observe today in the Solar System are still not fully understood. Recent studies have demonstrated that H-accreting white dwarfs (WDs) in a binary sys- tem exploding as type…
Ultra-massive DA WD stars are expected to harbor ONe cores resulting from the progenitor evolution through the Super-AGB phase. As evolution proceeds during the WD cooling phase, a crystallization process resulting from Coulomb interactions…
We present an analysis of the most massive white dwarf candidates in the Montreal White Dwarf Database 100 pc sample. We identify 25 objects that would be more massive than $1.3~M_{\odot}$ if they had pure H atmospheres and CO cores,…
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…
White dwarfs that have accreted rocky planetary bodies provide unique insights regarding the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. The analysis presented here uses observed white dwarf atmospheric abundances to constrain both where in…
We determine the phase diagram for dense carbon/ oxygen mixtures in White Dwarf (WD) star interiors using molecular dynamics simulations involving liquid and solid phases. Our phase diagram agrees well with predictions from Ogata et al. and…
Diffusion coefficients are essential microphysics input for modeling white dwarf evolution, as they impact phase separation at crystallization and sedimentary heat sources. Present schemes for computing diffusion coefficients are accurate…
Gravitational settling of 22Ne in cooling white dwarfs can affect the outcome of thermonuclear supernovae. We investigate how the supernova energetics and nucleosynthesis are in turn influenced by this process. We use realistic chemical…
Motivated by the strong discrepancy between the main sequence turn-off age and the white dwarf cooling age in the metal-rich open cluster NGC 6791, we compute a grid of white dwarf evolutionary sequences that incorporates for the first time…
White Dwarfs (WDs), the final evolutionary stage of most stars, are frequently modeled considering only a dense plasma matter. However, their potential interaction with dark matter (DM), especially in galactic halos where DM is expected to…
We present new numerical method to compute structures of differentially rotating white dwarfs with thermal stratification. Our models have cores composed of ions and completely degenerate electrons and have isentropic envelopes composed of…
We present an exploration of the significance of Carbon/Oxygen phase separation in white dwarf stars in the context of self-consistent evolutionary calculations. Because phase separation can potentially increase the calculated ages of the…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a cooling process that depends on the energy stored in the core and on the way in which it is transferred through the envelope. In this paper we show that despite some (erroneous) claims, the redistribution…
Mixtures of bare atomic nuclei on a nearly uniform degenerate electron background are a realistic model of matter in the interior of white dwarfs. Despite tremendous progress in understanding their phase diagrams achieved mainly via…
We explore the effects of the residual $\mathrm{^{12}C}$ present in oxygen-neon white dwarfs (ONe WDs) on their evolution towards accretion-induced collapse (AIC). We produce a set of ONe WD models using MESA and illustrate how the amount…
We explore the adiabatic pulsational properties of massive white dwarf stars with hydrogen-rich envelopes and oxygen/neon and carbon/oxygen cores. To this end, we compute the cooling of massive white dwarf models for both core compositions…
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…
The observational signature of core crystallization of white dwarfs has recently been discovered. However, the magnitude of the crystallization-powered cooling delay required to match observed white dwarfs is larger than predicted by…
We study the violent phase of the merger of massive binary white dwarf systems. Our aim is to characterize the conditions for explosive burning to occur, and identify a possible explosion mechanism of Type Ia supernovae. The primary…