Related papers: The spectral evolution of white dwarfs: where do w…
White dwarfs, the extremely dense remnants left behind by most stars after their death, are characterised by a mass comparable to that of the Sun compressed into the size of an Earth-like planet. In the resulting strong gravity, heavy…
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…
As they evolve, white dwarfs undergo major changes in surface composition, a phenomenon known as spectral evolution. In particular, some stars enter the cooling sequence with helium atmospheres (type DO) but eventually develop hydrogen…
In the framework of our extensive modeling study of the spectral evolution of white dwarfs, we present here a new set of detailed calculations of the transport of residual hydrogen in helium-rich white dwarfs. First, we investigate the…
White dwarf stars are subject to various element transport mechanisms that can cause their surface composition to change radically as they cool, a phenomenon known as spectral evolution. In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive…
White dwarfs represent the endpoint of stellar evolution for stars with initial masses between approximately 0.07 msun and 8-10 msun, where msun is the mass of the Sun (more massive stars end their life as either black holes or neutron…
This chapter provides an in-depth overview of white dwarfs, the evolutionary terminus of the vast majority of stars. It discusses their discovery, their nature as degenerate objects, their connections to earlier phases of stellar evolution,…
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…
We present a study of the hypothesis that white dwarfs undergo a spectral change from hydrogen- to helium-dominated atmospheres using a volume-limited photometric sample drawn from the $Gaia$ DR2 catalogue, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey…
Taking advantage of the Gaia Data Release 2, recent studies have revisited the evolution of carbon-polluted white dwarfs (DQs) across a large range of effective temperatures. These analyses have clearly confirmed the existence of two…
White dwarf stars are the most common final stage of stellar evolution. Since the serendipitous discovery of the first white dwarf by William Herschel and the first physical models by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Arthur Eddington, there…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a cooling process that depends on the energy stored in the core and on the way in which it is transferred through the envelope. In this paper we show that despite some (erroneous) claims, the redistribution…
White dwarfs are the end state of most stars, including the Sun, after they exhaust their nuclear fuel. Between 1/4 and 1/2 of white dwarfs have elements heavier than helium in their atmospheres, even though these elements should rapidly…
White dwarfs are compact objects with atmospheres containing mainly light elements, hydrogen or helium. Because of their surface high gravitational field, heavy elements diffuse downwards in a very short timescale compared to the…
Motivated by the recent detection of single and binary He-core white dwarfs in metal-rich clusters, we present a full set of evolutionary calculations and colors appropriate for the study of such white dwarfs. The paper is also aimed at…
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 can be used as galactic chronometers and, therefore, provide important information about galactic evolution if good theoretical models of their cooling are available. Consequently, it is natural to wonder if all the sources or…
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…
Practically all known planet hosts will evolve into white dwarfs, and large parts of their planetary systems will survive this transition - the same is true for the solar system beyond the orbit of Mars. Spectroscopy of white dwarfs…
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…