Levitation and Mass Loss in Hot DA White Dwarfs

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

We have recently published a study of 8 hot white dwarfs, 7 DA and 1 He-rich, using IUE high-dispersion data. Of the 7 DA white dwarfs, three show unexpected sharplined features of heavy elements, such as Si II-IV, C IV, and N V, arising in the immediate environment of the stars. We suggest that radiative acceleration may be levitating these ions in white dwarf photospheres, and further suggest that sharplined features of heavy elements are observable in hot DA white dwarfs when Teff 20,000 k and log(g) < 8.0. In addition, results for 2 DA white Dwarfs, surprisingly, indicate mass loss. Although still tentative, both our observational results and theoretical interpretations have already stimulated significant interest among our astronomical colleagues. We propose a continuation of our program to obtain highdispersion observations of 5DA white dwarfs (3 having determined parallaxes) in order to search for additional evidence for mass loss in white dwarfs, and to further map out the Teff-109(g) domain in which these newly discovered phenomena occur, and to test our now tentative conclusions on a larger sample of data. This program may provide further insights into mass loss mechanisms not only in white dwarfs, but in all stars where this process is observed.

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