Related papers: Testing White Dwarf Crystallization Theory with As…
More than 40 years have passed since Ed Salpeter and others predicted that the carbon/oxygen cores of the coolest white dwarf stars in our Galaxy will theoretically crystallize. This effect has a dramatic impact on the calculated ages of…
We consider the pulsational properties of white dwarf star models with temperatures appropriate for the ZZ Ceti instability strip and with masses large enough that they should be substantially crystallized. Our work is motivated by the…
Ultra-massive hydrogen-rich (DA spectral type) white dwarf (WD) stars ($M_{\star} > 1M_{\odot}$) coming from single-star evolution are expected to harbor cores made of $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne, resulting from semi-degenerate carbon burning…
We present the first asteroseismological study for 42 massive ZZ Ceti stars based on a large set of fully evolutionary carbon$-$oxygen core DA white dwarf models characterized by a detailed and consistent chemical inner profile for the core…
White dwarfs are stellar embers depleted of nuclear energy sources that cool over billions of years. These stars, which are supported by electron degeneracy pressure, reach densities of 1e7 grams per cubic centimetre in their cores. It has…
We present in this work new pulsational calculations for improved carbon-oxygen DA white dwarf models suitable for the study of massive ZZ Ceti stars. The background models employed in this study, presented in detail in a recent paper by…
BPM 37093 is the only hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarf currently known which has sufficient mass (~ 1.1 M_sun) to theoretically crystallize while still inside the ZZ Ceti instability strip (T_eff ~ 12,000 K). As a consequence, this star…
All single stars that are born with masses up to 8.5 - 10 $M_\odot$ will end their lives as a white dwarf (WD) star. In this evolutionary stage, WDs enter the cooling sequence, where the stars radiate away their thermal energy, and are…
White dwarfs correspond to the final stages of stellar evolution of solar-type stars. In these objects, production of energy by nuclear burning has ended which means that a white dwarf simply cools down over the course of the next billion…
We present follow-up spectroscopy and a detailed model atmosphere analysis of 29 wide double white dwarfs, including eight systems with a crystallized C/O core member. We use state-of-the-art evolutionary models to constrain the physical…
The white dwarfs are promising laboratories for the study of cosmochronology and stellar evolution. Through observations of the pulsating white dwarfs, we can measure their internal structures and compositions, critical to understanding…
Ultra-massive hydrogen-rich (DA) white dwarfs (WD) are expected to have a substantial portion of their cores in a crystalline state at the effective temperatures characterizing the ZZ Ceti instability strip, as a result of Coulomb…
Ultra-massive DA WD stars are expected to harbor ONe cores resulting from the progenitor evolution through the Super-AGB phase. As evolution proceeds during the WD cooling phase, a crystallization process resulting from Coulomb interactions…
DA-type white dwarfs account for 80% of all white dwarfs and represent, for most of them, the ultimate outcome of the typical evolution of low-to-intermediate mass stars. Their internal chemical stratification is strongly marked by passed,…
ZZ Ceti stars are pulsating white dwarfs with a carbon-oxygen core build up during the core helium burning and thermally pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch phases. Through the interpretation of their pulsation periods by means of…
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…
The observational signature of core crystallization of white dwarfs has recently been discovered. However, the magnitude of the crystallization-powered cooling delay required to match observed white dwarfs is larger than predicted by…
The purpose of this work is to explore the evolution of helium-core white dwarf stars in a self-consistent way with the predictions of detailed non-gray model atmospheres and element diffusion. To this end, we consider helium-core white…
Although numerous white dwarf stars host dusty debris disks, the temperature distribution of these stars differs significantly from the white dwarf population as a whole. Dusty debris disks exist exclusively around white dwarfs cooler than…
Long predicted more than fifty years ago, strong evidence for the existence of crystalline cores inside white dwarfs has recently been obtained by the Gaia space telescope. It is thus important to investigate how a crystalline core may…