Infrared Signatures of Disrupted Minor Planets at White Dwarfs

Details Infrared Signatures of Disrupted Minor Planets at White Dwarfs Infrared Signatures of Disrupted Minor Planets at White Dwarfs

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21333304f&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #333.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.394

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Spitzer IRAC and MIPS photometric observations are presented for 20 white dwarfs with T < 20,000 K and metal-contaminated photospheres. A warm circumstellar disk is detected at GD 16 and likely at PG 1457-086, while the remaining targets fail to reveal mid-infrared excess typical of dust disks, including a number of heavily polluted stars. Extending previous studies, over 50% of all single white dwarfs with implied metal accretion rates above 3e8 g/s display a warm infrared excess from orbiting dust; the likely result of a tidally-destroyed minor planet. This benchmark accretion rate lies between the dust production rates of 1e6 g/s in the solar system zodiacal cloud and 1e10 g/s often inferred for debris disks at main sequence A-type stars. It is estimated that between 1% and 3% of all single white dwarfs with cooling ages less than around 0.5 Gyr possess circumstellar dust, signifying an underlying population of minor planets.

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