Related papers: Fast and Slow Crystallization-driven Convection in…
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…
Ultramassive white dwarfs with masses $M\gtrsim 1.1\,{\rm M}_\odot$ probe extreme physics near the Chandrasekhar limit. Despite the rapid increase in observations, it is still unclear how many harbour carbon-oxygen (CO) versus oxygen-neon…
We explore the observational appearance of the merger of a low-mass star with a white dwarf (WD) binary companion. We are motivated by Schreiber et al. (2016), who found that multiple tensions between the observed properties of cataclysmic…
We continue our comprehensive theoretical investigation of the spectral evolution of white dwarfs based on sophisticated simulations of element transport. In this paper, we focus on the transformation of PG 1159 stars into DO/DB white…
The evolution of binaries consisting of evolved main sequence stars (1 < M_d/Msun < 3.5) with white dwarf companions (0.7 < M_wd/Msun < 1.2) is investigated through the thermal mass transfer phase. Taking into account the stabilizing effect…
We report on the masses ($M_\mathrm{WD}$), effective temperatures ($T_\mathrm{eff}$) and secular mean accretion rates ($\langle \dot{M} \rangle$) of 43 cataclysmic variable (CV) white dwarfs, 42 of which were obtained from the combined…
We present dynamically consistent solutions for hot accretion onto unmagnetized, rotating white dwarfs (WDs) in five quiescent dwarf novae. The measured WD rotation rates (and other system parameters) in RX And, SS Cyg, U Gem, VW Hyi and WZ…
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…
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…
A recent study by Yoon & Langer (2004a) indicated that the inner cores of rapidly accreting (Mdot > 10^{-7} M_sun/yr) CO white dwarfs may rotate differentially, with a shear rate near the threshold value for the onset of the dynamical shear…
We consider the pulsational properties of white dwarf star models with temperatures appropriate for the ZZ Ceti instability strip and with masses large enough that they should be substantially crystallized. Our work is motivated by the…
Observations of heavy metal pollution in white dwarf stars indicate that metal-rich planetesimals are frequently scattered into star-grazing orbits, tidally disrupted, and accreted onto the white dwarf surface, offering direct insight into…
We discuss some of our current knowledge of the mass distribution of DA and non-DA stars using various methods for measuring white dwarf masses including spectroscopic, trigonometric parallax, and gravitational redshift measurements, with a…
Cool white dwarfs are reliable and independent stellar chronometers. The most common white dwarfs have carbon-oxygen dense cores. Consequently, the cooling ages of very cool white dwarfs sensitively depend on the adopted phase diagram of…
We reexamine the theoretical instability domain of pulsating DB white dwarfs (DBV or V777 Her variables). We performed an extensive $g$-mode nonadiabatic pulsation analysis of DB evolutionary models considering a wide range of stellar…
Based on a compilation of OVI, CIV, SiIV and NV data from IUE, FUSE, GHRS, STIS, and COS, we derive an anti- correlation between the stellar temperature and the high ion velocity shift w.r.t. to the photosphere, with positive (resp.…
Heavy elements are observed in the atmospheres of many DA and DB white dwarfs, and their presence is attributed to the accretion of matter coming from debris disks. Several authors have deduced accretion rates from the observed abundances,…
Extremely low-mass white dwarfs (ELM WDs) are the result of binary evolution in which a low-mass donor star is stripped by its companion leaving behind a helium-core white dwarf. We explore the formation of ELM WDs in binary systems…
Spectroscopic observations of some metal-rich white dwarfs (WDs), believed to be polluted by planetary material, reveal the presence of compact gaseous metallic disks orbiting them. The observed variability of asymmetric, double-peaked…
White Dwarf luminosities are powerful age indicators, whose calibration should be based on reliable models. We discuss the uncertainty of some chemical and physical parameters and their influence on the age estimated by means of white dwarf…