Abundances in cool metal-polluted white dwarfs Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Blouin S.
  2. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

The accretion of rocky material is responsible for the presence of heavy elements in the atmospheres of a large fraction of white dwarf stars. Those objects represent a unique opportunity to infer the bulk composition of exoplanetesimals. This chemical characterization requires the use of detailed atmosphere models to determine the elemental abundances at the photospheres of white dwarfs. In this work, we use a state-of-the-art model atmosphere code to reanalyse the first large survey of metal-polluted white dwarfs for which abundances are found for multiple elements. We show that the improved constitutive physics of our models lead to systematically higher Mg abundances than previous analyses. We find an average logMg/Ca number abundance ratio of 1.5. This value is significantly above the reference abundance for chondrites, which is expected as current diffusion models predict that for the cool helium-atmosphere white dwarfs of our sample, Mg should remain in the atmosphere longer than Ca. This helps resolve a recently identified Mg depletion problem, where the planetesimals accreted by white dwarfs were reported to be Mg-deficient compared to the expected composition of their planetary systems.

Keywords
  1. White dwarf stars
  2. Chemically peculiar stars
  3. Effective temperature
  4. Stellar masses
  5. Stellar distance
  6. Infrared photometry
  7. Optical astronomy
  8. Wide-band photometry
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2020MNRAS.496.1881B
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/496/1881
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/496/1881

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/496/1881
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/496/1881
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/496/1881
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/496/1881/table1?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/496/1881/table1?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/496/1881/table1?

History

2023-09-28T14:37:27Z
Resource record created
2023-09-28T13:38:11Z
Updated
2023-09-28T14:37:27Z
Created

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr