Discovery of Molecular Hydrogen in White Dwarf Atmospheres

Abstract

With the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, we have detected molecular hydrogen in the atmospheres of three white dwarfs with effective temperatures below 14,000 K, G29-38, GD 133 and GD 31. This discovery provides new independent constraints on the stellar temperature and surface gravity of white dwarfs.

10 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, ApJL, accepted

References in corpus (3)

• The Chemical Composition of an Extrasolar Minor Planet
• Externally-polluted white dwarfs with dust disks
• Deciphering the Pulsations of G 29-38 with Optical Time Series Spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (16)

• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs
• Elemental Compositions of Two Extrasolar Rocky Planetesimals
• Coupled-cluster theory for atoms and molecules in strong magnetic fields
• Search for a drifting proton--electron mass ratio from H${}_2$
• Infrared Variability of Two Dusty White Dwarfs
• The Hyades Cluster: Identification of a Planetary System and Escaping White Dwarfs
• Fully numerical electronic structure calculations on diatomic molecules in weak to strong magnetic fields
• Limits on a Gravitational Field Dependence of the Proton--Electron Mass Ratio from H${}_2$ in White Dwarf Stars
• Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics with Screened Lorentz Forces. Part II. Efficient Propagators and Rovibrational Spectra in Strong Magnetic Fields
• A Search for short-period Rocky Planets around WDs with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS)
• H${}_2$ Lyman and Werner band lines and their sensitivity for a variation of the proton-electron mass ratio in the gravitational potential of white dwarfs
• Search for varying constants of nature from astronomical observation of molecules
• Periodic optical variability and debris accretion in white dwarfs: a test for a causal connection
• A network of cooler white dwarfs as infrared standards for flux calibration
• Searching for cosmological variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio using a single $H_2$ system
• Equation-of-motion coupled-cluster variants in combination with perturbative triples corrections in strong magnetic fields