Related papers: The Physics of crystallizing white dwarfs

The white dwarf luminosity function, which provides information about their cooling, has been measured with high precision in the past few years. Simulations that include well known Standard Model physics give a good fit to the data. This…

Observations of galactic white dwarfs with Gaia have allowed for unprecedented modeling of white dwarf cooling, resolving core crystallization and sedimentary heating from neutron rich nuclei. These cooling sequences are sensitive to the…

In this paper we demonstrate how pulsating white dwarfs can be used as an astrophysical laboratory for empirically constraining convection in these stars. We do this using a technique for fitting observed non-sinusoidal light curves, which…

The 3-body crystallization diagrams of C/O/Ne ionic mixtures characteristic of white dwarf interiors are examined within the framework of the density-functional theory of freezing. The crystallization process is described more accurately…

White dwarfs are a class of stars with unique physical properties. They present many challenging problems whose solution requires the application of advanced theories of dense matter, state-of-the-art experimental techniques, and extensive…

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 almost completely degenerate objects that cannot obtain energy from the thermonuclear sources and their evolution is just a gravothermal process of cooling. The simplicity of these objects, the fact that the physical inputs…

There are a few different mechanisms that can cause white dwarf stars to vary in brightness, providing opportunities to probe the physics, structures, and formation of these compact stellar remnants. The observational characteristics of the…

Galactic history is written in the white dwarf stars. Their surface properties hint at interiors composed of matter under extreme conditions. In the forty years since their discovery, pulsating white dwarf stars have moved from side-show…

The white dwarf luminosity function is well understood in terms of standard model physics and leaves little room for exotic cooling mechanisms related to the possible existence of new weakly interacting light particles. This puts…

Motivated by the possibility that the fundamental ``constants'' of nature could vary with time, this paper considers the long term evolution of white dwarf stars under the combined action of proton decay and variations in the gravitational…

White dwarfs, the extremely dense remnants left behind by most stars after their death, are characterised by a mass comparable to that of the Sun compressed into the size of an Earth-like planet. In the resulting strong gravity, heavy…

Theoretical expectations concerning stars as neutrino sources are presented according to detailed evaluations of the stellar evolutionary histories for an extended grid of stellar masses. Neutrino fluxes and cumulative neutrino yields are…

It has been recently suggested that white dwarfs generate magnetic fields in a process analogous to the Earth. The crystallization of the core creates a compositional inversion that drives convection, and combined with rotation, this can…

Reliable modeling of the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs is crucial for understanding the atmospheric evolution of these stars and for accurate white dwarfs cosmochronology. Over the last decade {\it ab initio} modeling entered many…

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 use the irradiated secondary star in the remnant of Nova Cyg 1975 as a probe of the cooling white dwarf. At superior conjunction the flux in the B band is dominated by the irradiated face of the secondary star. The heated face produces…

White dwarfs rotate. The angular momentum in single white dwarfs must originate early in the life of the star, but also must be modified (and perhaps severely modified) during the many stages of evolution between birth as a main--sequence…

Deriving precise stellar ages is a challenging task. Consequently, age-dependent relations - such as the age-metallicity and age-velocity dispersion relations of the Milky Way, or the age-rotation-activity relation of low-mass stars - are…

Precession is observed routinely in solid bodies of Solar system and it has been invoked to explain number of phenomena observed in pulsars (i.e. Link 2003, Breton et al. 2008). White dwarfs also have been considered as possible candidates…