A study of metal abundance patterns in cool white dwarfs. I - Time-dependent calculations of gravitational settling

Details A study of metal abundance patterns in cool white dwarfs. I - Time-dependent calculations of gravitational settling A study of metal abundance patterns in cool white dwarfs. I - Time-dependent calculations of gravitational settling

Oct 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992apjs...82..505d&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (ISSN 0067-0049), vol. 82, no. 2, p. 505-521.

Statistics

Computation

51

Abundance, Cool Stars, Gravitational Effects, Metallicity, White Dwarf Stars, Heavy Elements, Stellar Evolution, Stellar Models

Scientific paper

The process of gravitational settling of Mg, Si, Ca, and Fe in models of cool white dwarfs are discussed. The evolution of the distribution of these metals over 25 orders of magnitude in abundance is examined for both static models and models incorporating the effects of cooling as function of time. It is shown that the behavior of the surface abundance of a given metal follows an exponential law very closely. The behavior of the abundance at a given radiative shell below the superficial convection zone is, however, quite different from an exponential law. It is confirmed that the primordial heavy elements can only leave negligible traces in the surface layers of a white dwarf, and that there is a need for an extrinsic source of metals in cool white dwarfs. It is also found that settling of heavy elements freezes over the inner 99-99.9 percent of the mass of a white dwarf, which may have significant impact on the computation of cooling time scales.

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