Polluting White Dwarfs with Perturbed Exo-Comets

Abstract

We present a model to account for the observed debris disks around young white dwarfs and the presence of metal-lines in their spectra. Stellar evolution models predict that the mass-loss on the AGB will be pulsed; furthermore, observations indicate that the bulk of the mass-loss occurs on the AGB. In this case, if the progenitors of the white dwarfs had remnants of planetary formation like the Sun's Oort cloud or the Kuiper Belt and a planet lying within that cloud or nearby, we find that up to 2% of the planetesimals will fall either into planet-crossing orbits or into chaotic regions after the mass-loss, depending on the location and mass of the planet (from Mars to Neptune). This yields a sufficient mass of comets that can be scattered toward the star, form a debris disk and pollute the atmosphere.

10 pages, 5 figures, final version accepted by MNRAS

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• Tidal disruption of planetary bodies by white dwarfs II: Debris disc structure and ejected interstellar asteroids
• Numerical Simulations of Gaseous Disks Generated from Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars
• Planetary Systems Around White Dwarfs
• Circularization of tidal debris around white dwarfs: implications for gas production and dust variability
• 1I/2017 'Oumuamua-like Interstellar Asteroids as Possible Messengers from the Dead Stars
• Speeding past planets? Asteroids radiatively propelled by giant branch Yarkovsky effects
• No evidence for a strong decrease of planetesimal accretion in old white dwarfs
• Post-main-sequence debris from rotation-induced YORP break-up of small bodies II: multiple fissions, internal strengths and binary production
• The lifetimes of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs
• Tidal circularization of gaseous planets orbiting white dwarfs
• Embedding planetesimals into white dwarf discs from large distances
• GD424 -- a helium-atmosphere white dwarf with a large amount of trace hydrogen in the process of digesting a rocky planetesimal
• Circumbinary exoplanets and brown dwarfs with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• 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. III. water retention in dwarf planets and exo-moons and implications for white dwarf pollution
• Dynamical evolution of two-planet systems and its connection with white dwarf atmospheric pollution
• Chaotic rotation and evolution of asteroids and small planets in high-eccentricity orbits around white dwarfs
• Survivability of radio-loud planetary cores orbiting white dwarfs
• On the role of resonances in polluting white dwarfs by asteroids
• Linking the formation and fate of exo-Kuiper belts within solar system analogues
• 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
• Generating metal-polluting debris in white dwarf planetary systems from small-impact crater ejecta
• Polluting White Dwarfs with Oort Cloud Comets
• High-resolution resonant portraits of a single-planet white dwarf system
• Binary asteroid dissociation and accretion around white dwarfs