Related papers: A white dwarf accreting planetary material determi…
White dwarf stars with high abundances of heavy elements in their atmospheres and infrared excesses are believed to be accreting planetary material. GD 362 is one of the most heavily polluted white dwarfs and has an exceptionally strong…
Dynamically active planetary systems orbit a significant fraction of white dwarf stars. These stars often exhibit surface metals accreted from debris disks, which are detected through infrared excess or transiting structures. However, the…
Interacting binaries in which a white dwarf accretes material from a companion --- cataclysmic variables (CVs) in which the mass loss is via Roche-lobe overflow, and symbiotic stars in which the white dwarf captures the wind of a late type…
High-metallicity pollution is common in white dwarf (WD) stars hosting remnant planetary systems. However, they rarely have detectable debris accretion discs, possibly because much of the influx is fast steeply-infalling debris in…
The cool white dwarf SDSS J124231.07+522626.6 exhibits photospheric absorption lines of 8 distinct heavy elements in medium resolution optical spectra, notably including oxygen. The Teff = 13000 K atmosphere is helium-dominated, but the…
Measurements of accretion rates onto planetary mass objects may distinguish between different planet formation mechanisms, which predict different accretion histories. In this Letter, we use \HST/WFC3 UVIS optical photometry to measure…
At least 25% of white dwarfs show atmospheric pollution by metals, sometimes accompanied by detectable circumstellar dust/gas discs or (in the case of WD 1145+017) transiting disintegrating asteroids. Delivery of planetesimals to the white…
Planetary systems can survive the stellar evolution, as evidenced by the atmospheric metal pollution and dusty disks of single white dwarfs. Recent observations show that 1 to 4 percent of single white dwarfs are accompanied by dusty disks,…
It was recently proposed that metal-rich white dwarfs (WDs) accrete their metals from compact debris disks found to exist around more than a dozen of them. At the same time, elemental abundances measured in atmospheres of some WDs imply…
Many white dwarfs have accreted material from their own planetary systems. These objects can be used to infer the composition of exoplanetary material and identify evidence for key geological processes. However, the white dwarf atmospheric…
White dwarfs are the most common endpoints of stellar evolution. They are often found in close binary systems in which the white dwarf is accreting matter from a companion star, either via an accretion disc or channelled along the white…
White dwarf stars frequently experience external pollution by heavy elements, and yet the intrinsically carbon-enriched DQ spectral class members fail to exhibit this phenomenon, representing a decades-old conundrum. This study reports a…
A quarter of DA white dwarfs are metal polluted, yet elements heavier than helium sink down through the stellar atmosphere on timescales of days. Hence, these white dwarfs must be currently accreting material containing heavy elements.…
White dwarfs that have accreted planetary materials provide a powerful tool to probe the interiors and formation of exoplanets. In particular, the high Fe/Si ratio of some white dwarf pollutants suggests that they are fragments of bodies…
Due to the short settling times of metals in DA white dwarf atmospheres, any white dwarfs with photospheric metals must be actively accreting. It is therefore natural to expect that the metals may not be deposited uniformly on the surface…
About 25-50% of white dwarfs (WDs) show metal lines in their spectra. Among the widely accepted explanations for this effect is that the these WDs are accreting asteroids that are perhaps flung onto the WDs by a planet via resonance, for…
Accretion of planetary material onto host stars may occur throughout a star's life. Especially prone to accretion, extrasolar planets in short-period orbits, while relatively rare, constitute a significant fraction of the known population,…
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…
Novae are cataclysmic variable binary systems in which a white dwarf primary is accreting material from a low mass companion. The importance of this accretion takes on added significance if the WD can increase its mass to reach the…
We calculated diffusion timescales for Ca, Mg, Fe in hydrogen atmosphere white dwarfs with temperatures between 5000 and 25000 K. With these timescales we determined accretion rates for a sample of 38 DAZ white dwarfs from the recent…