Evaporation and Accretion of Extrasolar Comets Following White Dwarf Kicks

Abstract

Several lines of observational evidence suggest that white dwarfs receive small birth kicks due to anisotropic mass loss. If other stars possess extrasolar analogues to the Solar Oort cloud, the orbits of comets in such clouds will be scrambled by white dwarf natal kicks. Although most comets will be unbound, some will be placed on low angular momentum orbits vulnerable to sublimation or tidal disruption. The dusty debris from these comets will manifest itself as an IR excess temporarily visible around newborn white dwarfs; examples of such disks may already have been seen in the Helix Nebula, and around several other young white dwarfs. Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope may distinguish this hypothesis from alternatives such as a dynamically excited Kuiper Belt analogue. Although competing hypotheses exist, the observation that $\gtrsim 15\%$ of young white dwarfs possess such disks, if interpreted as indeed being cometary in origin, provides indirect evidence that low mass gas giants (thought necessary to produce an Oort cloud) are common in the outer regions of extrasolar planetary systems. Hydrogen abundances in the atmospheres of older white dwarfs can, if sufficiently low, also be used to place constraints on the joint parameter space of natal kicks and exo-Oort cloud models.

22 pages, 13 figures, published in MNRAS. Changes made to match published version

References in corpus (13)

• One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations
• Keplerian discs around post-AGB stars: a common phenomenon?
• A Debris Disk around the Central Star of the Helix Nebula?
• Sedna and the Oort Cloud Around a Migrating Sun
• Infrared Emission from the Dusty Disk Orbiting GD 362, An Externally-Polluted White Dwarf
• The Formation of the Oort Cloud in Open Cluster Environments
• Hot DB White Dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Mass-loss and diffusion in subdwarf B stars and hot white dwarfs: do weak winds exist?
• The Dynamical Effects of White Dwarf Birth Kicks in Globular Star Clusters
• On the Radial Distribution of White Dwarfs in the Globular Cluster NGC 6397
• Dusty Disks Around Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae
• Constraining white-dwarf kicks in globular clusters
• Orbital evolution with white-dwarf kicks

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Formation of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs I: Tidal disruption of an extremely eccentric asteroid
• The Chemical Composition of an Extrasolar Kuiper-Belt-Object
• Hydrogen delivery onto white dwarfs from remnant exo-Oort cloud comets
• Numerical Simulations of Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars
• Explaining the variability of WD 1145+017 with simulations of asteroid tidal disruption
• Tidal disruption of planetary bodies by white dwarfs I: A hybrid SPH-analytical approach
• The orbital evolution of asteroids, pebbles and planets from giant branch stellar radiation and winds
• Tidal disruption of planetary bodies by white dwarfs II: Debris disc structure and ejected interstellar asteroids
• The Fate of Exomoons in White Dwarf Planetary Systems
• Planetary Systems Around White Dwarfs
• Circularization of tidal debris around white dwarfs: implications for gas production and dust variability
• The fates of Solar system analogues with one additional distant planet
• Speeding past planets? Asteroids radiatively propelled by giant branch Yarkovsky effects
• Linking long-term planetary $N$-body simulations with periodic orbits: application to white dwarf pollution
• Mass and eccentricity constraints on the planetary debris orbiting the white dwarf WD 1145+017
• The lifetimes of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs
• Post-main-sequence debris from rotation-induced YORP break-up of small bodies II: multiple fissions, internal strengths and binary production
• Constraining the origin of the planetary debris surrounding ZTF J0139+5245 through rotational fission of a triaxial asteroid
• ALMA and Herschel Observations of the Prototype Dusty and Polluted White Dwarf G29-38
• The dynamical history of the evaporating or disrupted ice giant planet around white dwarf WD J0914+1914
• Post main sequence evolution of icy minor planets II: water retention and white dwarf pollution around massive progenitor stars
• Post-main-sequence evolution of icy minor planets. III. water retention in dwarf planets and exo-moons and implications for white dwarf pollution
• On the role of resonances in polluting white dwarfs by asteroids
• Survivability of radio-loud planetary cores orbiting white dwarfs
• The critical binary star separation for a planetary system origin of white dwarf pollution
• On the pollution of white dwarfs by exo-Oort cloud comets
• Polluting White Dwarfs with Oort Cloud Comets
• Evidence for the disruption of a planetary system during the formation of the Helix Nebula
• Retrograde orbits excess among observable interstellar objects
• On the Formation of an Eccentric Nuclear Disk following the Gravitational Recoil Kick of a Supermassive Black Hole
• Time-Variable Aluminum Absorption in the Polar AR Ursae Majoris, and an Updated Estimate for the Mass of the White Dwarf
• Discovery of an icy and nitrogen-rich extrasolar planetesimal
• White dwarf eccentricity fluctuation and dissipation by AGB convection