Related papers: Accreting white dwarfs
We review the current state of observational work on the formation of brown dwarfs, focusing on their initial mass function, velocity and spatial distributions at birth, multiplicity, accretion, and circumstellar disks. The available…
Improved observations of globular clusters are uncovering a large number of radio pulsars and of X-ray sources. The latter include binaries in which a neutron star or a white dwarf accretes matter from a companion, recycled pulsars, and…
The prediction of the spins of the compact remnants is a fundamental goal of the theory of stellar evolution. Here, we confront the predictions for white dwarf spins from evolutionary models including rotation with observational…
In the course of their evolution, white-dwarf stars go through at least one phase of variability in which the global pulsations they undergo allow astronomers to peer into their interiors, this way making possible to shed light on their…
Only a handful of gas giant planets orbiting white dwarfs are known. It remains unclear whether this paucity reflects observational challenges or the consequences of stellar evolution. We aim to carry out population synthesis of substellar…
White dwarf planetary systems provide a unique way to measure the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. Extrasolar asteroids/comets/moons which have survived the evolution of their host star can end up in the atmosphere of the white…
A number of cool white dwarfs with metal traces, of spectral types DAZ, DBZ, and DZ have been found to exhibit infrared excess radiation due to circumstellar dust. The origin of this dust is possibly a tidally disrupted asteroid that formed…
There are a few different mechanisms that can cause white dwarf stars to vary in brightness, providing opportunities to probe the physics, structures, and formation of these compact stellar remnants. The observational characteristics of the…
Recent calculations of accretion-induced collapse of an oxygen-neon-magnesium white dwarf into a neutron star [Piro & Thompson 2014] allow for a potentially detectable transient electromagnetic signal. Motivated by these results, I present…
We examine recent studies on the formation rate of planetary nebulae and find this rate to be about one-third of the formation rate of white dwarfs. This implies than only about one-third of all planetary nebulae that evolve to form white…
There is a striking and unexplained dearth of brown dwarf companions in close orbits (< 3AU) around stars more massive than the Sun, in stark contrast to the frequency of stellar and planetary companions. Although rare and relatively…
White dwarfs are a class of stars with unique physical properties. They present many challenging problems whose solution requires the application of advanced theories of dense matter, state-of-the-art experimental techniques, and extensive…
On the basis of theoretical evolutionary expectations, we develop a Galactic model reproducing star counts and synthetic color-magnitude diagrams of field stars, which include the white dwarf (WD) population. In this way we are able to…
We present an initial-final mass relation derived from the spectroscopically-complete volume-limited 40 pc sample of white dwarfs. The relation is modelled using population synthesis methods to derive an initial stellar population which can…
White dwarfs (WDs) are the final fate of about 97\% of the stars in our galaxy, making them vital tracers of stellar history. A fraction of WDs exist in cataclysmic variable (CV) systems, accreting matter from a nearby companion star. A…
Dynamical interactions that take place between objects in dense stellar systems lead to frequent formation of exotic stellar objects, unusual binaries, and systems of higher multiplicity. They are most important for the formation of…
Although white dwarfs are believed to be the end point of most stellar evolution, unlike main sequence stars, they have not yet been the subject of dedicated time-domain surveys for exoplanets. We discuss how their size and distinctive…
White dwarfs and neutron stars are stellar objects with masses comparable to that of our sun. However, as the endpoint stages of stellar evolution, these objects do not sustain any thermonuclear burning and therefore can no longer support…
Despite the recent discoveries of planets orbiting stars at all evolutionary stages, the evolution of planetary systems remains poorly understood. Studying planetary systems around red giant branch stars can reveal how main sequence…
We investigate the evolution of the magnetic field of isolated pulsars and of neutron stars in different kinds of binary systems, assuming the field to be originally confined to the crust. Our results for the field evolution in isolated…