Pulsating White Dwarf Stars and Precision Asteroseismology

Abstract

Galactic history is written in the white dwarf stars. Their surface properties hint at interiors composed of matter under extreme conditions. In the forty years since their discovery, pulsating white dwarf stars have moved from side-show curiosities to center stage as important tools for unraveling the deep mysteries of the Universe. Innovative observational techniques and theoretical modeling tools have breathed life into precision asteroseismology. We are just learning to use this powerful tool, confronting theoretical models with observed frequencies and their time rate-of-change. With this tool, we calibrate white dwarf cosmochronology; we explore equations of state; we measure stellar masses, rotation rates, and nuclear reaction rates; we explore the physics of interior crystallization; we study the structure of the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae, and we test models of dark matter. The white dwarf pulsations are at once the heartbeat of galactic history and a window into unexplored and exotic physics.

70 pages, 11 figures, to be published in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 2008

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• White Dwarf Rotation as a Function of Mass and a Dichotomy of Mode Linewidths: Kepler Observations of 27 Pulsating DA White Dwarfs Through K2 Campaign 8
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• SDSS J184037.78+642312.3: The First Pulsating Extremely Low Mass White Dwarf
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• Amplitude and frequency variations of oscillation modes in the pulsating DB white dwarf star KIC~08626021: The likely signature of nonlinear resonant mode coupling
• An independent limit on the axion mass from the variable white dwarf star R548
• New chemical profiles for the asteroseismology of ZZ Ceti stars
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• New evolutionary sequences for hot H-deficient white dwarfs on the basis of a full account of progenitor evolution
• Theoretical seismology in 3D : nonlinear simulations of internal gravity waves in solar-like stars
• Formation and evolution of hybrid He-CO white dwarfs and their properties
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• Dynamical tides in coalescing superfluid neutron star binaries with hyperon cores and their detectability with third generation gravitational-wave detectors
• Listening to the gravitational wave sound of circumbinary exoplanets
• Excitation of gravity waves by fingering convection, and the formation of compositional staircases in stellar interiors
• KIC11911480: the second ZZ Ceti in the $Kepler$ field
• The seismic properties of low-mass He-core white dwarf stars
• Relativistic Klein-Gordon-Maxwell multistream model for quantum plasmas
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• Four New Massive Pulsating White Dwarfs Including an Ultramassive DAV
• A second case of outbursts in a pulsating white dwarf observed by Kepler
• Pulsating low-mass white dwarfs in the frame of new evolutionary sequences: III. The pre-ELM white dwarf instability strip
• The potential of asteroseismology for probing the core chemical stratification in white dwarf stars
• Asteroseismology of the Kepler V777 Her variable white dwarf with fully evolutionary models
• TESS first look at evolved compact pulsators: asteroseismology of the pulsating helium-atmosphere white dwarf TIC 257459955
• Pulsating hydrogen-deficient white dwarfs and pre-white dwarfs observed with TESS: I. Asteroseismology of the GW Vir stars RX J2117+3412, HS 2324+3944, NGC 6905, NGC 1501, NGC 2371, and K 1-16
• Evidence for Temperature Change and Oblique Pulsation from Light Curve Fits of the Pulsating White Dwarf GD 358
• Precision asteroseismology of the pulsating white dwarf GD 1212 using a two-wheel-controlled Kepler spacecraft
• Search for p-mode oscillations in DA white dwarfs with VLT-ULTRACAM. I. Upper limits to the p-modes
• Sub-percent Photometry: Faint DA White Dwarf Spectophotometric Standards for Astrophysical Observatories
• Discovery of Three Pulsating, Mixed-atmosphere, Extremely Low-mass White Dwarf Precursors
• When flux standards go wild: white dwarfs in the age of Kepler
• Discovery of Rapidly Moving Partial X-ray Absorbers within gamma Cassiopeiae
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• Adaptive elliptical aperture photometry: a software package for high-cadence ground-based photometry. I. Application to rapid oscillators observed from SAAO
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