Related papers: White dwarf fundamentals
This White Paper, submitted to the National Academy of Sciences' Astro2010 Decadal Review Committee, focuses on 2 central themes in the study of young brown dwarfs -- their formation mechanism and disk characteristics -- which are of direct…
White dwarf stars are the final stage of most stars, born single or in multiple systems. We discuss the identification, magnetic fields, and mass distribution for white dwarfs detected from spectra obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey…
Motivated by the possibility that the fundamental ``constants'' of nature could vary with time, this paper considers the long term evolution of white dwarf stars under the combined action of proton decay and variations in the gravitational…
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…
I discuss and consider the status of observational determinations of the rotation velocities of white dwarf stars via asteroseismology and spectroscopy. While these observations have important implications on our understanding of the…
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…
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…
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…
Planetary systems that orbit white dwarf stars can be studied via spectroscopic observations of the stars themselves. Numerous white dwarfs are seen to have accreted mostly rocky minor planets, the remnants of which are present in the…
White dwarfs are the burnt out cores of Sun-like stars and are the final fate of 97% of all stars in our Galaxy. The internal structure and composition of white dwarfs are hidden by their high gravities, which causes all elements, apart…
We describe the spectral classification of white dwarfs and some of the physical processes important for their understanding. In the major part of this paper we discuss the input physics and computational methods for one of the most widely…
White dwarfs are among the most common objects in the stellar halo; however, due to their low luminosity and low number density compared to the stars in the discs of the Milky Way, they are scarce in the observable volume. Hence, they are…
There are no known examples of magnetic white dwarfs with fields larger than about 3MG paired with a non-degenerate companion in detached binary systems. The suggestion is that highly magnetic, isolated white dwarfs may originate from stars…
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…
White dwarfs are the remnants of stars not massive enough to become supernovae. This review explores the concept of strange dwarfs, a unique class of white dwarfs which contain cores of strange quark matter. Strange dwarfs have different…
The shape of the luminosity function of white dwarfs (WDLF) is sensitive to the characteristic cooling time and, therefore, it can be used to test the existence of additional sources or sinks of energy such as those predicted by alternative…
Although it a very narrow angle survey, the depth of the HDF results in its sampling a significant volume of the halo of our galaxy. Thus it is useful for the purposes of detecting (or placing upper limits on the distribution of)…
Within the theoretical framework of some modern unification theories the constants of nature are functions of cosmological time. White dwarfs offer the possibility of testing a possible variation of G and, thus, to place constraints to…
Understanding stellar evolution and its effect on planetary systems is crucial for correctly interpreting the chemical constraints of exo-planetary material that can be given to us by white dwarfs. This article will describe how asteroids,…
We use the results of realistic N-body simulations to investigate the appearance of the white dwarf population in dense star clusters. We show that the presence of a substantial binary population in a star cluster, and the interaction of…