Related papers: The prototype double-faced white dwarf has a thin …
The hydrogen abundances in DBA white dwarfs determined from optical or UV spectra have been reported to differ significantly in some studies. We revisit this problem using our own model atmospheres and synthetic spectra, and present a…
We present follow-up spectroscopy of 711 white dwarfs within 100 pc, and present a detailed model atmosphere analysis of the 100 pc white dwarf sample in the SDSS footprint. Our spectroscopic follow-up is complete for 83% of the white…
We construct a menu of objects that can give rise to bright flares when disrupted by massive black holes (BHs), ranging from planets to evolved stars. Through their tidal disruption, main sequence and evolved stars can effectively probe the…
A spectroscopic analysis of the DBA (or DAB) white dwarf KUV 02196+2816 is presented. The observed hydrogen and helium line profiles are shown to be incompatible with model spectra calculated under the assumption of a homogeneous hydrogen…
We investigate the effects of element diffusion on the structure and evolution of low-mass helium white dwarfs (WD). Attention is focused on the occurrence of hydrogen shell flashes induced by diffusion processes during cooling phases.…
The present work is designed to explore the evolution of helium-core white dwarf (HeWD) stars for the case of metallicities much lower than the solar one (Z=0.001 and Z=0.0002). Evolution is followed in a self-consistent way with the…
White dwarfs with metal-polluted atmospheres have been studied widely in the context of the accretion of rocky debris from evolved planetary systems. One open question is the geometry of accretion and how material arrives and mixes in the…
The recent plethora of sky surveys, especially the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, have discovered many low-mass (M < 0.45 Msun) white dwarfs that should have cores made of nearly pure helium. These WDs come in two varieties; those with masses…
We have detected three new hydrogen-deficient (H < 0.001 mass fraction) pre-white dwarfs (WDs) with helium-dominated atmospheres. The first object is a relatively cool PG1159 star (effective temperature Teff = 72,000 K) that has the lowest…
Optical spectrophotometry and circular spectropolarimetry are presented for several candidate magnetic white dwarfs that were identified during the Hamburg/ESO survey for bright QSOs. HE 1211-1707 and HE 1043-0502 are rare examples of white…
We develop a general framework to compute photometric variations induced by the oblique rotation of a star with an axisymmetric inhomogeneous surface. We apply the framework to compute lightcurves of white dwarfs adopting two simple models…
The properties of gas in the halos of galaxies constrain global models of the interstellar medium. Kinematical information is of particular interest since it is a clue to the origin of the gas. Until now mostly massive galaxies have been…
We present new cooling sequences, color-magnitude diagrams, and color-color diagrams for cool white dwarfs with pure hydrogen atmospheres down to an effective temperature $\te=1500$ K. We include a more detailed treatment of the physics of…
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…
A spectroscopic analysis of the DAB white dwarf PG 1115+166 is presented. The observed hydrogen and helium line profiles are shown to be incompatible with model spectra calculated under the assumption of homogeneous or stratified chemical…
The metal abundances in the atmospheres of hot white dwarfs (WDs) entering the cooling sequence are determined by the preceding Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) evolutionary phase and, subsequently, by the onset of gravitational settling and…
Aims: Hydrogen deficient white dwarfs are characterized by very dense, fluid-like atmospheres of complex physics and chemistry that are still poorly understood. The incomplete description of these atmospheres by the models results in…
Ground-based and spacecraft telescopic observations, combined with an intensive modeling effort, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hot giant planets and brown dwarfs over the past ten years. Although these objects are all fluid,…
We present a homogeneous analysis of 1023 DBZ/DZ(A) and 319 DQ white dwarf stars taken from the Montreal White Dwarf Database. This represents a significant increase over the previous comprehensive studies on these types of objects. We use…
A large number of extremely low-mass helium white dwarfs (ELM WDs) have been discovered in recent years. The majority of them are found in close binary systems suggesting they are formed either through a common-envelope phase or via stable…