Dusty WDs in the $WISE$ All Sky Survey $\cap$ SDSS

Abstract

A recent cross-correlation between the SDSS DR7 White Dwarf Catalog with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer ($WISE$) all-sky photometry at 3.4, 4.6, 12, and 22 microns performed by Debes et al. (2011) resulted in the discovery of 52 candidate dusty white dwarfs (WDs). The 6'' $WISE$ beam allows for the possibility that many of the excesses exhibited by these WDs may be due to contamination from a nearby source, however. We present MMT$+$SWIRC $J$- and $H$-band imaging observations (0.5-1.5'' PSF) of 16 of these candidate dusty WDs and confirm that four have spectral energy distributions (SEDs) consistent with a dusty disk and are not accompanied by a nearby source contaminant. The remaining 12 WDs have contaminated $WISE$ photometry and SEDs inconsistent with a dusty disk when the contaminating sources are not included in the photometry measurements. We find the frequency of disks around single WDs in the $WISE$ $\cap$ SDSS sample to be 2.6-4.1%. One of the four new dusty WDs has a mass of $1.04M_{\odot }$ (progenitor mass $5.4M_{\odot }$) and its discovery offers the first confirmation that massive WDs (and their massive progenitor stars) host planetary systems.

19 pages, 4 figures; Accepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (27)

• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars
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• Compositions of Planetary Debris around Dusty White Dwarfs
• The Drop during Less than 300 days of a Dusty White Dwarf's Infrared Luminosity
• Infrared observations of white dwarfs and the implications for the accretion of dusty planetary material
• Infrared-excess white dwarfs in the Gaia 100 pc sample
• Numerical Simulations of Gaseous Disks Generated from Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars
• Solar Abundances of Rock Forming Elements, Extreme Oxygen and Hydrogen in a Young Polluted White Dwarf
• Infrared Excesses around Bright White Dwarfs from Gaia and unWISE I
• The dust never settles: collisional production of gas and dust in evolved planetary systems
• Five New Post-Main-Sequence Debris Disks with Gaseous Emission
• A 3 Gyr White Dwarf with Warm Dust Discovered via the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project
• Simultaneous infrared and optical observations of the transiting debris cloud around WD 1145+017
• A Word to the WISE: Confusion is Unavoidable for WISE-selected Infrared Excesses
• Infrared Excesses around Bright White Dwarfs from Gaia and unWISE. II
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• Distant White Dwarfs in the US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station Parallax Sample
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• A subtle IR excess associated with a young White Dwarf in the Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey
• White Dwarfs with Infrared Excess from LAMOST Data Release 5
• A power law decay evolution scenario for polluted single white dwarfs
• Disk or Companion: Characterizing Excess Infrared Flux in Seven White Dwarf Systems with Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
• A Young White Dwarf with an Infrared Excess
• White Dwarf Variability with gPhoton: Pulsators
• Serendipitous discovery of a dusty disc around WDJ181417.84-735459.83
• Planetesimals drifting through dusty and gaseous white dwarf debris discs: Types I, II and III-like migration