Related papers: White dwarfs as Physics laboratories: lights and s…
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…
Reliable modeling of the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs is crucial for understanding the atmospheric evolution of these stars and for accurate white dwarfs cosmochronology. Over the last decade {\it ab initio} modeling entered many…
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…
Axions are the natural consequence of the introduction of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry to solve the strong CP problem. All the efforts to detect such elusive particles have failed up to now. Nevertheless, it has been recently shown that the…
White dwarf stars constitute the final evolutionary stage for more than 95 per cent of all stars. The Galactic population of white dwarfs conveys a wealth of information about several fundamental issues and are of vital importance to study…
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…
As a result of competing physical mechanisms, the atmospheric composition of white dwarfs changes throughout their evolution, a process known as spectral evolution. Because of the ambiguity of their atmospheric compositions and the…
The measured rates of period change, $\dot{P}$, in the signals of pulsating white dwarf stars are often interpreted as direct detections of structural changes from secular cooling. Due to the intrinsic nature of this quantity, $\dot{P}$…
White dwarfs are the end-product of the lifes of intermediate- and low-mass stars and their evolution is described as a simple cooling process. Recently, it has been possible to determine with an unprecedented precision their luminosity…
Motivated by the possibility that the fundamental ``constants'' of nature could vary with time, this paper considers the long term evolution of white dwarf stars under the combined action of proton decay and variations in the gravitational…
It has been shown that the shape of the luminosity function of white dwarfs can be a powerful tool to check for the possible existence of DFSZ-axions. In particular, Isern et al. (2008) showed that, if the axion mass is of the order of a…
We present an empirical determination of the white dwarf cooling sequence in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Using spectral models, we determine temperatures for 887 objects from Wide Field Camera 3 data, as well as 292 objects from data…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a simple gravothermal process of cooling. Since the shape of their luminosity function is sensitive to the characteristic cooling time, it is possible to use its slope to test the existence of additional…
A secular variation of the gravitational constant modifies the structure and evolutionary time scales of white dwarfs. Using an state-of-the-art stellar evolutionary code and an up-to-date pulsational code we compute the effects of a…
We present a set of full evolutionary sequences for white dwarfs with hydrogen-deficient atmospheres. We take into account the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars, all the relevant energy sources involved in the cooling, element…
The luminosity function of white dwarfs is a powerful tool for studies of the evolution and formation of the Milky Way. The (theoretical) white dwarf cooling sequence provides a useful indicator of the evolutionary time scales involved in…
Pre-white dwarf (PWD) star evolution can be driven by energy losses from neutrino interactions in the core. Unlike solar neutrinos, these are not the by-product of nuclear fusion, but instead result from electron scattering processes in the…
We investigate the evolution of isolated, zero and finite temperature, massive, uniformly rotating and highly magnetized white dwarf stars under angular momentum loss driven by magnetic dipole braking. We consider the structure and thermal…
We summarize recent improvements in model atmosphere and internal structure of faint white dwarfs. We derive an analytical cooling theory which illustrates the effects of various physical processes on the energy budget and the cooling…
White dwarf cooling sequences provides a useful indicator of the evolutionary time scales involved in the chronometry and star formation history of the galactic disk and, for this reason, the luminosity function of white dwarfs has become a…