Related papers: The Future of Evolved Planetary Systems
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…
The ESA Gaia mission has revolutionized our understanding of the white dwarf population, delivering an unprecedented census of these nearby remnants and revealing previously unseen structures in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram.…
Almost every known planet host will evolve into a white dwarf, and the surviving planetary material will continue to orbit this stellar remnant. Asteroids perturbed onto star-grazing orbits will become disrupted, forming an accretion disk…
Interacting binaries containing white dwarfs can lead to a variety of outcomes that range from powerful thermonuclear explosions, which are important in the chemical evolution of galaxies and as cosmological distance estimators, to strong…
White dwarf binaries are fundamental astrophysical probes. They represent ideal laboratories to test the models of binary evolution, which also apply to the sources of gravitational waves, whose detection led to the award of the 2017 Nobel…
White dwarfs, the final evolutionary stage of the vast majority of stars, serve as critical tools for cosmochronology, studies of planetary system evolution, and laboratories for non-standard physics, including exotic cooling channels and…
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 represent the most common end stage of stellar evolution and are important for a range of astrophysical questions. The high-resolution ultraviolet spectroscopic capability of the Habitable World Observatory (HWO) offers a…
White dwarf stars, the endpoint of stellar evolution for 97% of stars in our Milky Way, offer a unique and powerful window into the bulk elemental composition of rocky exoplanetary bodies. Up to 50% of single white dwarfs are observed with…
Various techniques are being used to search for extra-solar planetary signatures, including accurate measurement of radial velocity and positional (astrometric) displacements, gravitational microlensing, and photometric transits. Planned…
As astronomers, we are living an exciting time for what concerns the search for other worlds. Recent discoveries have already deeply impacted our vision of planetary formation and architectures. Future bio-signature discoveries will…
White dwarf stars are the most common endpoint of stellar evolution. Therefore, these old, numerous and compact objects provide valuable information on the late stages of stellar evolution, the physics of dense plasma and the structure and…
Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains…
White dwarf planetary science is a rapidly growing field of research featuring a diverse set of observations and theoretical explorations. Giant planets, minor planets, and debris discs have all been detected orbiting white dwarfs. The…
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,…
Although white dwarfs are believed to be the end point of most stellar evolution, unlike main sequence stars, they have not yet been the subject of dedicated time-domain surveys for exoplanets. We discuss how their size and distinctive…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
We live in an exoplanet revolution, with more than 5,000 exoplanets detected to date. Our ability to characterise individual exoplanets is constantly improving, with exquisite mass and radius measurements for an ever-growing sample of…
Transmission and eclipse spectroscopy have been invaluable tools for the characterisation of extrasolar planet atmospheres. While they will continue to provide many new insights and discoveries in the decade(s) to come, these methods are…
Exoplanet science is booming. In 20 years our knowledge has expanded considerably, from the first discovery of a Hot Jupiter, to the detection of a large population of Neptunes and super-Earths, to the first steps toward the…