POLLUTION OF SINGLE WHITE DWARFS BY ACCRETION OF MANY SMALL ASTEROIDS

By Michael Jura. 2008

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extrapolating from the solar system's asteroid belt, we propose that externally contaminated white dwarfs without an infrared excess may be experiencing continuous accretion of gas-phase material that is ultimately derived from the tidal destruction of multiple small asteroids. If this scenario is correct, then observations of metal-polluted white dwarfs may lead to determination of the bulk elemental compositions of ensembles of extrasolar minor planets.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/160a3bdcb083130b217759593919a205848f4144

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Farihi
2. Michael Jura
3. Amy Bonsor
4. Kevin J. Walsh
5. A. Mustill
6. Simon Bruderer
7. D. Koester
8. B. Gänsicke

Citations in the corpus

• Dynamical effects of stellar mass-loss on a Kuiper-like belt (2011, background): “Considering only stellar wind drag and sublimation, Jura (2008) shows that asteroids 1–10 km in size survive the giant branch evolution outside 3–4 au.”
• The Compositional Structure of the Asteroid Belt (2015, background): “One fourth to one third of cool white dwarfs have heavy elements in their atmospheres that accreted from in-falling asteroids (Alcock et al., 1986, Jura 2008, Jura & Young 2014).”
• INFRARED SIGNATURES OF DISRUPTED MINOR PLANETS AT WHITE DWARFS (2009, background): “This argument has been slightly recast (Jura et al. 2007b; Jura 2008) to suggest that those DAZ white dwarfs with the highest metal accretion rates are the stars with infrared excess.”
• THE LINK BETWEEN PLANETARY SYSTEMS, DUSTY WHITE DWARFS, AND METAL-POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “During post main sequence evolution, smaller planetesimals migrate and evaporate in response to gas drag from the central star evolving off the main sequence, but a significant portion of large (r>1-3 km) planetesimals survive primarily unscathed (Jura 2008).”
• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “However, sublimation of the dust will unavoidably lead to the additional presence of gas within the disc, and the gas content may be enhanced e.g. by the impact of additional asteroids on an existing debris disc (Jura 2008).”
• The warm gas atmosphere of the HD 100546 disk seen by Herschel - Evidence of a gas-rich, carbon-poor atmosphere? (2012, background): “Indications of a carbon deficit are also found towards other planetary systems (Jura 2008).”
• ANCIENT PLANETARY SYSTEMS ARE ORBITING A LARGE FRACTION OF WHITE DWARF STARS (2010, background): “…(but non-zero) pollution, were the observed high-Z elements initially carried by multiple rocky objects of only modest size that originate in an ancient planetary system (Jura 2008), or do these elements originate from an alternative source, for example the interstellar medium (Dufour et al. 2007)?”
• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, background): “One possibility is an auxiliary asteroid and its debris impacting the disk from a previous disruption, where roughly the entire mass of the smaller body should become gaseous due to high-velocity collisions between debris streams with distinct orbital inclinations (Jura, 2008).”
• Simulations of two-planet systems through all phases of stellar evolution: implications for the instability boundary and white dwarf pollution (2013, background): “Changes to the dynamics of the planetary system following stellar mass-loss has been suggested as a potential cause of increased numbers of planetary bodies scattered on to star-grazing orbits (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002; Jura 2008; Bonsor et al. 2011; Debes et al. 2012).”