Related papers: A magnetic white dwarf formed through a binary mer…
White dwarfs (WDs), the evolutionary endpoints of most stars, can form through both single-star and binary channels. While single-star evolutionary models enable reliable WD age estimates, binary evolution introduces interactions that can…
Context: White dwarfs (WDs) are important and abundant tools to study the structure and evolution of the Galactic environment. However, the multiplicity of WD progenitors is generally neglected. Specifically, a merger in a binary system can…
The maximum mass of a star that can produce a white dwarf (WD) is an important astrophysical quantity. One of the best approaches to establishing this limit is to search for WDs in young star clusters in which only massive stars have had…
White dwarfs represent the last stage of evolution of stars with mass less than about eight times that of the Sun and, like other stars, are often found in binaries. If the orbital period of the binary is short enough, energy losses from…
When a star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it either explodes as a supernova or more quiescently becomes a white dwarf, an object about half the mass of our Sun with a radius of about that of the Earth. About one fifth of white dwarfs exhibit…
White dwarfs (WDs) are the stellar core remnants of low mass stars. They are typically divided into three main composition groups: Oxygen Neon (ONe), Carbon Oxygen (CO) and Helium (He) WDs. The evolution of binary systems can significantly…
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…
Merger of two white dwarfs (WDs) has been proposed to form an isolated WD having high magnetization and rapid rotation. We study the influence of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wind on spin evolution of the newly-formed merger product. We…
It is not known how single white dwarfs with masses less than 0.5Msolar -- low-mass white dwarfs -- are formed. One way in which such a white dwarf might be formed is after the merger of a helium-core white dwarf with a main-sequence star…
A White Dwarf (WD) star and a main-sequence companion may interact through their different stellar evolution stages. This sort of binary population has historically helped us improve our understanding of binary formation and evolution…
The origin of magnetic fields in white dwarfs remains a fundamental unresolved problem in stellar astrophysics. In particular, the very different fractions of strongly (exceeding 1 MG) magnetic white dwarfs in evolutionarily linked…
Since their initial discovery, the origin of isolated white dwarfs (WDs) with magnetic fields in excess of $\sim$1 MG has remained a mystery. Recently, the formation of these high-field magnetic WDs has been observationally linked to strong…
Magnetic fields can play an important role in stellar evolution. Among white dwarfs, the most common stellar remnant, the fraction of magnetic systems is more than 20 per cent. The origin of magnetic fields in white dwarfs, which show…
We describe spectroscopic observations of 21 low-mass (<0.45 M_sun) white dwarfs (WDs) from the Palomar-Green Survey obtained over four years. We use both radial velocities and infrared photometry to identify binary systems, and find that…
Using WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have isolated a sample of 258 white dwarfs (WDs) in the Galactic globular cluster M4. Fields at three radial distances from the cluster center were observed and sizeable WD populations were…
White dwarfs with surface magnetic fields in excess of $1 $MG are found as isolated single stars and relatively more often in magnetic cataclysmic variables. Some 1,253 white dwarfs with a detached low-mass main-sequence companion are…
White dwarf (WD) stars evolve simply and predictably, making them reliable age indicators. However, self-consistent validation of the methods for determining WD total ages has yet to be widely performed. This work uses 1565 wide ( > 100 au)…
About 10% of stars more massive than ${\approx}\,1.5\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$ have strong, large-scale surface magnetic fields and are being discussed as progenitors of highly-magnetic white dwarfs and magnetars. The origin of these fields…
The detections of four apparently young radio pulsars in the Milky Way globular clusters are difficult to reconcile with standard neutron star formation scenarios associated with massive star evolution. Here we discuss formation of these…
Double white dwarf (DWD) mergers are possibly the leading formation channel of massive, rapidly rotating, high-field magnetic white dwarfs (HFMWDs). However, the direct link connecting a DWD merger to any observed HFMWD is still missing. We…