Related papers: Disks and Planets Around Massive White Dwarfs
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of…
Many nearby stars are surrounded by a bright ring or disk of cold dust. Our calculations show that these disks and rings of dust are signposts of recent planet formation. Bright rings appear because dust associated with the formation of a…
We examine 14 hot white dwarfs for signs of infrared excess using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Twelve of the objects are massive white dwarfs which have been suggested to be the result of binary mergers. The remaining two objects are…
There is solid observational evidence on the existence of massive, $M\sim 1~M_\odot$, highly magnetized white dwarfs (WDs) with surface magnetic fields up to $B\sim 10^9$ G. We show that, if in addition to these features, the star is fast…
Debris disks are optically thin, almost gas-free dusty disks observed around a significant fraction of main-sequence stars older than about 10 Myr. Since the circumstellar dust is short-lived, the very existence of these disks is considered…
The onset of planet formation in protoplanetary disks is marked by the growth and crystallization of sub-micron-sized dust grains accompanied by dust settling toward the disk mid-plane. Here we present infrared spectra of disks around brown…
Here, we present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 15 helium atmosphere, metal-rich white dwarfs obtained at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. While a connection has been demonstrated between the most highly polluted, hydrogen…
Multi-epoch infrared photometry from Spitzer is used to monitor circumstellar discs at white dwarfs, which are consistent with disrupted minor planets whose debris is accreted and chemically reflected by their host stars. Widespread…
Debris discs are known to exist around many planet-host stars, but no debris dust has been found so far in systems with transiting planets. Using publicly available catalogues, we searched for infrared excesses in such systems. In the…
This prospective chapter gives our view on the evolution of the study of circumstellar discs within the next 20 years from both observational and theoretical sides. We first present the expected improvements in our knowledge of…
Since there are several ways planets can survive the giant phase of the host star, we examine the habitability and detection of planets orbiting white dwarfs. As a white dwarf cools from 6000 K to 4000 K, a planet orbiting at 0.01 AU would…
The radial transport, or drift, of dust has taken a critical role in giant planet formation theory. However, it has been challenging to identify dust drift pile ups in the hard-to-observe inner disk. We find that the IM Lup disk shows…
There are growing amount of very high-resolution polarized scattered light images of circumstellar disks. Nascent giant planets planets are surrounded by their own circumplanetary disks which may scatter and polarize both the planetary and…
We assume a scenario in which transition discs (i.e. discs around young stars that have signatures of cool dust but lack significant near infra-red emission from warm dust) are associated with the presence of planets (or brown dwarfs).…
Since giant planets scatter planetesimals within a few tidal radii of their orbits, the locations of existing planetesimal belts indicate regions where giant planet formation failed in bygone protostellar disks. Infrared observations of…
I discuss the role that disc fragmentation plays in the formation of gas giant and terrestrial planets, and how this relates to the formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, and ultimately to the process of star formation. Protostellar…
Debris disk detections around M dwarfs are rare, and so far no gas emission has been detected from an M dwarf debris disk. This makes the 45 Myr old M dwarf WISEJ080822.18-644357.3 a bit of a curiosity; it has a strong infrared excess at an…
We present preliminary limits on the presence of planets around white dwarf stars using the IRAC photometer on the Spitzer space telescope. Planets emit strongly in the mid-infrared which allows their presence to be detected as an excess at…
We report Spitzer Space Telescope photometry of eleven externally-polluted white dwarfs. Of the nine stars for which we have IRAC photometry, we find that GD 40, GD 133 and PG 1015+161 each has an infrared excess that can be understood as…
We report the discovery of excess K-band radiation from a massive DAZ white dwarf star, GD362. Combining infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations, we show that the excess radiation cannot be explained by a stellar or substellar…