Related papers: An Asteroseismic Test of Diffusion Theory
Hydrogen deficient stars include the cool R CrB variable (RCBs) and hydrogen-deficient carbon (HdCs) giants through extreme helium stars (EHes) to the very hot helium-rich subdwarfs (He-sdO and O(He) stars) and white dwarfs. With surfaces…
We present high-resolution VLT spectra of a new DO white dwarf and a new PG1159 star, which we identified in the ESO SPY survey. The PG1159 star is a low-gravity, extremely hot (Teff=160,000 K, log g=6) star, having a C/He dominated…
A detailed analysis of halo white dwarf candidates is presented, which is based on model atmosphere fits to observed energy distributions built from photoelectric or photographic magnitudes. Most of the candidates identified in reduced…
White dwarfs are the dense, burnt-out remnants of the vast majority of stars, condemned to cool over billions of years as they steadily radiate away their residual thermal energy. To first order, their atmosphere is expected to be made…
PG 1159 stars are thought to be progenitors of the majority of H-deficient white dwarfs. Their unusual He-, C-, and O-dominated surface composition is typically believed to result from a late thermal pulse experienced by a single…
We calculated a grid of evolutionary models for white dwarfs with helium cores (He-WDs) and investigated the occurrence of hydrogen-shell flashes due to unstable hydrogen burning via CNO cycling. Our calculations show that such thermal…
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…
Hot subdwarfs represent a group of low-mass helium-burning stars formed through binary-star interactions and include some of the most chemically-peculiar stars in the Galaxy. Stellar evolution theory suggests that they should have…
The atmospheres of cool, helium-rich white dwarfs constitute an exotic and poorly explored physical regime of stellar atmospheres. Under physical conditions where the temperature varies from $\rm 1000K$ to $\rm 10000K$, the density can…
We determine the ratio of helium- to hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarf stars as a function of effective temperature from a model atmosphere analysis of the infrared photometric data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey combined with available…
GD 362 is a massive white dwarf with a spectrum suggesting a H-rich atmosphere which also shows very high abundances of Ca, Mg, Fe and other metals. However, for pure H-atmospheres the diffusion timescales are so short that very extreme…
We present here a detailed pulsational study applied to low-mass He-core white dwarfs, based on full evolutionary models representative of these objects. The background stellar models on which our pulsational analysis was carried out were…
Recent studies of the atmospheres of carbon-rich (DQ) white dwarfs have demonstrated the existence of two different populations that are distinguished by the temperature range, but more importantly, by the extremely high masses of the…
Pulsation frequencies reveal the interior structures of white dwarf stars, shedding light on the properties of these compact objects that represent the final evolutionary stage of most stars. Two-minute cadence photometry from TESS will…
Context: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 has provided spectra of several new PG 1159 stars and DO white dwarfs. This increase in known hot H-deficient compact objects significantly improves the statistics and helps to…
Most of low- and intermediate-mass stars that populate the Universe will end their lives as white dwarf stars. These ancient stellar remnants have encrypted inside a precious record of the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars,…
We present the detection of non-radial oscillations in a hot, helium-atmosphere white dwarf using 78.7 d of nearly uninterrupted photometry from the Kepler space telescope. With an effective temperature >30,000 K, PG 0112+104 becomes 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…
We investigate the global pulsation properties of DBV white dwarf models that include both the double-layered envelope structure expected from time-dependent diffusion calculations, as well as a non-uniform C/O core expected from prior…
Diffusion of elements in the atmosphere and envelope of a star can drastically alter its surface composition, leading to extreme chemical peculiarities. We consider the case of hot subdwarfs, where surface helium abundances range from…