INFRARED SIGNATURES OF DISRUPTED MINOR PLANETS AT WHITE DWARFS

By J. Farihi, Michael Jura, B. Zuckerman. 2009

243 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Spitzer Space Observatory IRAC and MIPS photometric observations are presented for 20 white dwarfs with Teff ≲ 20, 000 K and metal-contaminated photospheres. A warm circumstellar disk is detected at GD 16 and likely at PG 1457−086, while the remaining targets fail to reveal mid-infrared excess typical of dust disks, including a number of heavily polluted stars. Extending previous studies, over 50% of all single white dwarfs with implied metal-accretion rates dM/dt≳ 3 × 108 g s−1 display a warm infrared excess from orbiting dust; the likely result of a tidally destroyed minor planet. This benchmark accretion rate lies between the dust production rates of 106 g s−1 in the solar system zodiacal cloud and 1010 g s−1 often inferred for debris disks at main-sequence A-type stars. It is estimated that between 1% and 3% of all single white dwarfs with cooling ages less than around 0.5 Gyr possess circumstellar dust, signifying an underlying population of minor planets.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b63f4f2d5be1173875e7f23a01cc5b531ac080b4

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Farihi
2. B. Gänsicke
3. D. Koester
4. Michael Jura
5. Amy Bonsor
6. A. Mustill
7. B. Zuckerman
8. M. C. Wyatt

In Instrumentation

1. J. Farihi
2. B. Gänsicke
3. D. Koester
4. A. Mustill
5. Michael Jura
6. M. C. Wyatt
7. Amy Bonsor
8. P.-E. Tremblay

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. A. Mustill
2. J. Farihi
3. Amy Bonsor
4. B. Gänsicke
5. M. C. Wyatt
6. D. Martino
7. L. Ferrario
8. P. Marchant

Citations in the corpus

• FORETELLINGS OF RAGNARÖK: WORLD-ENGULFING ASYMPTOTIC GIANTS AND THE INHERITANCE OF WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “…metal-polluted atmospheres or with circumstellar discs strongly suggests that planets, feeding asteroidal or cometary material to locations close to the star, exist around these degenerate stellar remnants (Zuckerman et al. 2003; Gänsicke et al. 2006; Farihi et al. 2009; Gänsicke et al. 2012).”
• The chemical diversity of exo-terrestrial planetary debris around white dwarfs (2012, background): “Farihi et al. (2009) estimated accretion rates for 53 metal-polluted white dwarfs following the prescription of Koester & Wilken (2006), but scaling the results by the typical gas-to-dust ratio in the interstellar medium to account for the absence of H and He in the accreted debris, resulting in Ṁ…”
• KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: A DETAILED MODEL ATMOSPHERE ANALYSIS OF NEARBY WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “Note that our blue spectrum of LP 294-61 (0108+277; Figure 2) does not reveal any metallic feature and we have thus reclassified this star as DA (see also Section 3.6 of Farihi et al. 2009).”
• Magnetic White Dwarfs (2015, methodology): “This hypothesis is corroborated by the detection of close-in circumstellar dust and gas (Gänsicke et al. 2006a; Farihi et al. 2009).”
• Models of low-mass helium white dwarfs including gravitational settling, thermal and chemical diffusion, and rotational mixing (2016, background): “…WDs, the presence of metals in their atmosphere is explained by accretion from circumstellar debris discs formed by tidal disruption of planetary bodies (e.g. Debes & Sigurdsson 2002; Jura et al. 2007), which are detectable through excess flux in the IR (e.g. Farihi et al. 2009; Kilic et al. 2006).”
• ANCIENT PLANETARY SYSTEMS ARE ORBITING A LARGE FRACTION OF WHITE DWARF STARS (2010, background): “WD1334+039 classified as a DZ by Sion et al, is actually a DC (Farihi et al 2009; ZKRH03; Bergeron et al 2001).”
• Dynamical effects of stellar mass-loss on a Kuiper-like belt (2011, methodology): “The former sample corresponds approximately to temperatures between 13 500 and 19 500 K and 66 per cent of this sample have Ṁ > 108 g s−1, compared to 45 per cent of the stars with 100 tcool 10 Gyr.”
• THE LINK BETWEEN PLANETARY SYSTEMS, DUSTY WHITE DWARFS, AND METAL-POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “This is possible through the extensive compilation of Spitzer observed metal enriched white dwarfs presented in Farihi et al. (2009) and Farihi et al. (2010).”
• AGaiaData Release 2 catalogue of white dwarfs and a comparison with SDSS (2018, background): “…metal polluted white dwarfs (Sion et al. 1990; Zuckerman & Reid 1998; Dufour et al. 2007b; Koester et al. 2014; Raddi et al. 2015) or degenerate stars with dusty or gaseous planetary debris discs (Gänsicke et al. 2006; Farihi et al. 2009; Debes et al. 2011; Wilson et al. 2014; Manser et al. 2016).”
• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, methodology): “Subsequent disk searches with Spitzer began to include all known types of polluted white dwarfs, and attempted to analyze all the stars on the same basis of inferred accretion rate (Farihi et al., 2009).”
• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “Such a reservoir has been found in the form of dusty and gaseous discs around 30 white dwarfs (e.g. Zuckerman & Becklin 1987; Gänsicke et al. 2006; Farihi et al. 2009; Brinkworth et al. 201 ).”