Low Mass Companions to White Dwarfs

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of over 17 years of work searching for low mass stellar and substellar companions to more than 370 nearby white dwarfs. Roughly 60 low mass, unevolved companions were found and studied all together, with over 20 discovered in the last few years, including the first unambiguous brown dwarf companion to a white dwarf, GD 1400B. The resulting spectral type distributions for companions to white dwarfs and nearby cool field dwarfs are compared, and the implications for binary star formation are discussed. A brief analysis of GD 1400B, including new data, is also presented

4 pages with figures, accepted as part of a special issue of AN dedicated to the proceedings of the workshop "Ultralow Mass Star Formation and Evolution" held in La Palma, Spain during June/July 2005

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• New Close Binary Systems from the SDSS-I (Data Release Five) and the Search for Magnetic White Dwarfs in Cataclysmic Variable Progenitor Systems
• First Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of Magnetic Cataclysmic Variables: Evidence for Excess Emission at 3--8 microns
• Search for giant planets around seven white dwarfs in the Hyades cluster with the Hubble Space Telescope