English
Related papers

Related papers: White Dwarf cooling Sequences, II: luminosity func…

200 papers

We study the evolution of accreting oxygen-neon (ONe) white dwarfs (WDs), with a particular emphasis on the effects of the presence of the carbon-burning products $\mathrm{^{23}Na}$ and $\mathrm{^{25}Mg}$. These isotopes lead to substantial…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2017-08-28 Josiah Schwab , Lars Bildsten , Eliot Quataert

With the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have discovered in M4 (NGC 6121, C 1620-264) the first extensive sequence of cooling white dwarfs seen in a globular cluster. Adopting a distance modulus of…

Aims: We study single and binary white dwarfs in the inner halo of the Milky Way in order to learn more about the conditions under which the population of halo stars was born, such as the initial mass function (IMF), the star formation…

Motivated by the recent detection of single and binary He-core white dwarfs in metal-rich clusters, we present a full set of evolutionary calculations and colors appropriate for the study of such white dwarfs. The paper is also aimed at…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 L. G. Althaus , J. A. Panei , A. D. Romero , R. D. Rohrmann , A. H. Córsico , E. García-Berro , M. M. Miller Bertolami

We present the initial-final mass relation derived from 10 white dwarfs in wide binaries that consist of a main sequence star and a white dwarf. The temperature and gravity of each white dwarf was measured by fitting theoretical model…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-03 Jingkun Zhao , Terry D. Oswalt , Lee Anne Willson , Qian Wang , Gang Zhao

We present a photometric analysis of 19 DA and 13 DAO white dwarfs (WDs) with effective temperatures exceeding 60 kK, building on the spectral analysis reported in the first paper of this two-part study. By examining archival light curves…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-19 Semih Filiz , Nicole Reindl , David Jones , Paulina Sowicka , Matti Dorsch , Thomas Rauch , Klaus Werner

Many magnetic white dwarfs exhibit a polarised spectrum that periodically varies as the star rotates because the magnetic field is not symmetric about the rotation axis. In this work, we report the discovery that while weakly magnetic white…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-11-18 S. Bagnulo , J. D. Landstreet

We use new observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to study the white dwarf cooling sequence of the open cluster M37, a cluster that displays an extended main sequence turn-off and, according to a recent photometric analysis,…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-06-28 M. Griggio , M. Salaris , D. Nardiello , L. R. Bedin , S. Cassisi , J. Anderson

Pre-white dwarf (PWD) star evolution can be driven by energy losses from neutrino interactions in the core. Unlike solar neutrinos, these are not the by-product of nuclear fusion, but instead result from electron scattering processes in the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2010-11-23 M. Sean O'Brien , Steven D. Kawaler

The evolution of white dwarfs is a simple gravothermal process of cooling. Since the shape of their luminosity function is sensitive to the characteristic cooling time, it is possible to use its slope to test the existence of additional…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-05-23 Jordi Isern , Enrique Garcia-Berro , Santiago Torres , Roxana Cojocaru , Silvia Catalan

White dwarf stars are the most common end point of stellar evolution. Of special interest are the ultramassive white dwarfs, as they are related to type Ia Supernovae explosions, merger events, and Fast Radio Bursts. Ultramassive white…

In astrophysics, we often aim to estimate one or more parameters for each member object in a population and study the distribution of the fitted parameters across the population. In this paper, we develop novel methods that allow us to take…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-06-19 Shijing Si , David A. van Dyk , Ted von Hippel , Elliot Robinson , Aaron Webster , David Stenning

Our recent theoretical work (Townsley and Bildsten 2002) on the thermal state of white dwarfs (WDs) in low mass transfer rate binaries allows us to predict the broadband colors of the binary from those of the WD and companion when the disk…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Dean M. Townsley , Lars Bildsten

Over the past few years monitoring programs have shown ultra cool dwarfs (UCDs) to be photometrically variable. Of the 60 sources monitored in the field and some 120 monitored in clusters, about 40% show variability in both cases. For mid…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 C. A. L. Bailer-Jones

We describe radial velocity observations of a large sample of apparently single white dwarfs (WDs), obtained in a long-term effort to discover close, double-degenerate (DD) pairs which might comprise viable Type Ia Supernova (SN Ia)…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Rex A. Saffer , Mario Livio , Lev R. Yungelson

In this work we study white dwarfs where $30\,000\,\text{K} {>} \mathrm{T}_{\rm{eff}} {>} 5\,000\,\text{K}$ to compare the differences in the cooling of DAs and non-DAs and their formation channels. Our final sample is composed by nearly…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-10-24 G. Ourique , A. D. Romero , S. O. Kepler , D. Koester , L. A. Amaral

We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of the upper part (T_eff> 10 000 K) of the white dwarf cooling sequence in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae and measure a luminosity function of hot white dwarfs. Comparison with previous…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-08-26 Bradley Hansen , Harvey Richer , Jason Kalirai , Ryan Goldsbury , Shane Frewen , Jeremy Heyl

The DA white dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as analyzed in the papers for Data Releases 1 and 4, show an increase in surface gravity towards lower effective temperatures below 11500 K. We study the various possible explanations of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-07-22 D. Koester , S. O. Kepler , S. J. Kleinman , A. Nitta

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 P. Bergeron

Helium-core white dwarfs (He WDs) formed through common envelope (CE) evolution offer valuable insight into binary interaction channels and compact remnant formation. Their cooling rates critically impact both detectability and age…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-07-23 Leandro G. Althaus , Leila M. Calcaferro , Alejandro H. Córsico , Warren R. Brown