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Related papers: Polluting White Dwarfs with Oort Cloud Comets

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White dwarf WD 1145+017 is orbited by several clouds of dust, possibly emanating from actively disintegrating bodies. These dust clouds reveal themselves through deep, broad, and evolving transits in the star's light curve. Here, we report…

Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) are close binary star systems with one component an accreting white dwarf (WD) and the other a larger cooler star that fills its Roche Lobe. One consequence of the WDs accreting material, is the possibility that…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-02-11 Sumner Starrfield

(Abridged) We present the results of the first unbiased survey for metal pollution among H-atmosphere (DA) white dwarfs with cooling ages of 20-200 Myr and 17000K < Teff < 27000K, using HST COS in the far UV between 1130 and 1435 A. The…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2014-06-04 Detlev Koester , Boris T. Gänsicke , Jay Farihi

Common envelope (CE) evolution, which is crucial in creating short period binaries and associated astrophysical events, can be constrained by reverse modeling of such binaries' formation histories. Through analysis of a sample of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2022-12-20 Peter Scherbak , Jim Fuller

Accreting white dwarfs (AWDs) are among the best natural laboratories for understanding disk accretion. Their proximity, brightness, and purely classical nature make them ideal systems in which to probe the fundamental physics that governs…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-12 Simone Scaringi , Christian Knigge , Domitilla de Martino

We study the influence of an open cluster environment on the formation and current structure of the Oort cloud. To do this, we have run 19 different simulations of the formation of the Oort Cloud for 4.5 Gyrs. In each simulation, the solar…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Nathan A. Kaib , Thomas Quinn

Giant planet atmospheres are thought to reflect the gas phase composition of the disk when and where they formed. However, these atmospheres may also be polluted via solid accretion or ice sublimation in the disk. Here, we propose a novel…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-21 Eric R. Van Clepper , Felipe Alarcón , Edwin Bergin , Fred J. Ciesla

Previous investigations have revealed that eccentric super-Earths represent a class of planets which are particularly effective at transporting minor bodies towards white dwarfs and subsequently polluting their atmospheres with observable…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2022-03-14 Katja Stock , Dimitri Veras , Maxwell X. Cai , Rainer Spurzem , Simon Portegies Zwart

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2019-02-27 Josiah Schwab , Kyle Akira Rocha

White dwarf (WD) stars are considered cosmic laboratories to study the physics of dense plasma. Furthermore, the use of WD stars as cosmic clocks to date stellar populations and main sequence companions demands an appropriate understanding…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-12-04 Maria Camisassa , Denis A. Baiko , Santiago Torres , Alberto Rebassa-Mansergas

Accreting white dwarfs are known to show signatures of wind-type outflows in the ultraviolet. At optical wavelengths, however, wind detections have only been reported for a few sources. We present GTC-10.4m optical spectroscopy of four…

Roughly 1000 white dwarfs are known to be polluted with planetary material, and the progenitors of this material are typically assumed to be asteroids. The dynamical architectures which perturb asteroids into white dwarfs are still unknown,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-11-15 Matthew J. Payne , Dimitri Veras , Boris T. Gaensicke , Matthew J. Holman

In this paper we compute detailed evolutionary models providing chemical profiles for white dwarfs having progenitors in the mass range from 1.0 to $7 M_{\sun}$ and we examine the influence of such profiles in the cooling process. The…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-30 M. Salaris , I. Dominguez , E. Garcia-Berro , M. Hernanz , J. Isern , R. Mochkovitch

We describe a near-IR photometric search for cool red dwarf companions to hot EUV-detected white dwarfs (WDs). While some composite systems have been found optically among WDs detected in recent EUV All-Sky Surveys, we develop an IR…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Paul J. Green , Babar Ali , Ralf Napiwotzki

I review various phenomena associated with mass-accreting white dwarfs (WDs) in relation to progenitors of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). The WD mass can be estimated from light curve analysis in multiwavelength bands based on the optically…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2011-10-04 Mariko Kato

The behaviour of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (WDs) subject to direct helium accretion is extensively studied. We aim to analyze the thermal response of the accreting WD to mass deposition at different time scales. The analysis has been…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 L. Piersanti , A. Tornambé , L. R. Yungelson

The majority of white dwarfs that host periodic transiting planetary debris do so at distances that exceed the rubble-pile Roche limit, in disagreement with canonical formation models that focus on the tidal disruption of minor planets.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-21 Dimitri Veras , Jordan K. Steckloff , Kathryn Volk

In the vast expanse of our galaxy, white dwarfs (WDs) are natural sentinels, capturing the enigmatic dark matter (DM) particles that incessantly traverse their interiors. These celestial bodies provide a unique vantage point for probing…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2024-06-06 Jia-Shu Niu

We present the Planetary Enriched White Dwarf Database (PEWDD), a collection of published photospheric abundances of white dwarfs accreting planetary debris alongside additional information relevant to metal-enrichment and the presence of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-11-27 Jamie Williams , Boris Gaensicke , Andrew Swan , Mairi O'Brien , Paula Izquierdo , Anna-Maria Cutolo , Tim Cunningham

Double helium white dwarfs (He WDs) are one type of gravitational wave source and are greatly important in the studies of binary interaction, particularly in the common envelope (CE) ejection physics. Most double He WDs with mass ratios of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-10-21 Yangyang Zhang , Zhenwei Li , Xuefei Chen , Zhanwen Han