ANCIENT PLANETARY SYSTEMS ARE ORBITING A LARGE FRACTION OF WHITE DWARF STARS

By B. Zuckerman, C. Melis, B. Klein, D. Koester, Michael Jura. 2010

226 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ∼30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main-sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium, that a comparable fraction of the white dwarf descendants of such main-sequence stars are orbited by planetary systems. These systems have survived, at least in part, through all stages of stellar evolution that precede the white dwarf. During the time interval (∼200 million years) that a typical polluted white dwarf in our sample has been cooling it has accreted from its planetary system the mass of one of the largest asteroids in our solar system (e.g., Vesta or Ceres). Usually, this accreted mass will be only a fraction of the total mass of rocky material that orbits these white dwarfs; for plausible planetary system configurations we estimate that this total mass is likely to be at least equal to that of the Sun's asteroid belt, and perhaps much larger. We report abundances of a suite of eight elements detected in the little studied star G241-6 that we find to be among the most heavily polluted of all moderately bright white dwarfs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1127a089b047a76caf76fdeb07f1d95a29791f58

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Farihi
2. Amy Bonsor
3. A. Mustill
4. D. Veras
5. B. Gänsicke
6. D. Koester
7. Robert G. Izzard
8. O. De Marco

In Instrumentation

1. J. Farihi
2. A. Mustill
3. Amy Bonsor
4. M. C. Wyatt
5. D. Koester
6. O. De Marco
7. Robert G. Izzard
8. D. Veras

Citations in the corpus

• Formation of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs – I. Tidal disruption of an extremely eccentric asteroid (2014, background): “Precise and extensive observations of metal abundances in WD atmospheres (Zuckerman et al. 2003, 2010; Koester, Gänsicke & Farihi 2014) suggest the presence of dynamically active systems.”
• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, background): “These results strongly corroborate the pioneering studies based on optical, high-resolution spectroscopy, accounting for various differences in target properties and instrumentation (Zuckerman et al., 2003; Koester et al., 2005; Zuckerman et al., 2010).”
• Dawes Review 6: The Impact of Companions on Stellar Evolution (2016, background): “Between a quarter and half of all WDs exhibit some degree of pollution (Zuckerman et al., 2003, 2010; Barstow et al., 2014; Koester, Gänsicke, & Farihi, 2014).”
• Dynamical effects of stellar mass-loss on a Kuiper-like belt (2011, background): “Differences may well be attributed to differences in the birth environments of DA and DB white dwarfs (Zuckerman et al. 2010).”
• THE LINK BETWEEN PLANETARY SYSTEMS, DUSTY WHITE DWARFS, AND METAL-POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “A correlation between accretion rate and the presence of dusty disks has been suggested (von Hippel et al. 2007; Farihi et al. 2009; Zuckerman et al. 2010), with an accretion rate of >108.5 g/s consistent with the range above which dusty white dwarfs occur.”
• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, result): “A similar, but smaller study focusing on 30 DB white dwarfs reached comparable conclusions,≈25% of these stars have remnants of planetary systems (Zuckerman et al. 2010), with the statistics subject to the caveat regarding stars with deep convection zones mentioned above.”