THE LINK BETWEEN PLANETARY SYSTEMS, DUSTY WHITE DWARFS, AND METAL-POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS

By J. Debes, Kevin J. Walsh, C. Stark. 2012

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It has long been suspected that metal-polluted white dwarfs (types DAZ, DBZ, and DZ) and white dwarfs with dusty disks possess planetary systems, but a specific physical mechanism by which planetesimals are perturbed close to a white dwarf has not yet been fully posited. In this paper, we demonstrate that mass loss from a central star during post-main-sequence evolution can sweep planetesimals into interior mean motion resonances with a single giant planet. These planetesimals are slowly removed through chaotic excursions of eccentricity that in time create radial orbits capable of tidally disrupting the planetesimal. Numerical N-body simulations of the solar system show that a sufficient number of planetesimals are perturbed to explain white dwarfs with both dust and metal pollution, provided other white dwarfs have more massive relic asteroid belts. Our scenario requires only one Jupiter-sized planet and a sufficient number of asteroids near its 2:1 interior mean motion resonance. Finally, we show that once a planetesimal is perturbed into a tidal crossing orbit, it will become disrupted after the first pass of the white dwarf, where a highly eccentric stream of debris forms the main reservoir for dust-producing collisions. These simulations, in concert with observations of white dwarfs, place interesting limits on the frequency of planetary systems around main-sequence stars, the frequency of planetesimal belts, and the probability that dust may obscure future terrestrial planet finding missions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d61020284819d8599c6fac92786508086550aaa

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Farihi
2. A. Mustill
3. Amy Bonsor
4. B. Gänsicke
5. D. Veras
6. D. Koester
7. M. C. Wyatt
8. Z. Leinhardt

Citations in the corpus

• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “Smaller bodies are likely to be scattered, from locations comparable to the solar system’s main asteroid belt or Kuiper belt (Bonsor et al. 2011; Debes et al. 2012), which will lead to their tidal disruption if their trajectory takes them within the Roche radius of the white dwarf,≈1 R⊙, (Davidsson…”
• FORETELLINGS OF RAGNARÖK: WORLD-ENGULFING ASYMPTOTIC GIANTS AND THE INHERITANCE OF WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “Such delivery mechanisms require dynamical instability, whether local instability of the metalliferous planetesimals (Bonsor et al. 2011; Bonsor & Wyatt 2012; Debes et al. 2012) or wholesale global instability (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002, D. Veras et al., MN- RAS, submitted).”
• The chemical diversity of exo-terrestrial planetary debris around white dwarfs (2012, background): “…analogue asteroids or minor planets (Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003), or Kuiper-belt like objects (Bonsor et al. 2011), likely perturbed by unseen planets (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002; Debes et al. 2012), is the most likely origin of photospheric metals in many, if not most polluted white dwarfs.”
• 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).”
• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, background): “Exploring a Jupiter-main belt model extrapolated to the white dwarf phase, Debes et al. (2012b) find the 2:1 mean-motion resonance is sufficiently widened to perturb and tidally disrupt a significant number of large asteroids over cooling ages of 10–300 Myr.”
• Formation of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs – I. Tidal disruption of an extremely eccentric asteroid (2014, methodology): “Here, we are unconcerned with the dynamical architectures that would be necessary to propel the asteroid to the WD in this manner (see Bonsor et al. 2011; Debes et al. 2012a; Frewen & Hansen 2014) but rather focus entirely on the disruption process.”