Directly Linking Planetary systems to Dusty and Polluted White Dwarfs

Details Directly Linking Planetary systems to Dusty and Polluted White Dwarfs Directly Linking Planetary systems to Dusty and Polluted White Dwarfs

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.2206d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #22.06

Mathematics

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It has long been suspected that metal polluted white dwarfs (types DAZ, DBZ, and DZ) and white dwarfs with dusty disks possess planetary systems, but a specific physical mechanism for perturbing a planetesimal within the tidal disruption radius of a white dwarf and that material's subsequent accretion has not yet been fully posited. In this presentation we demonstrate that mass loss from a central star during post-main sequence evolution can sweep planetesimals into mean motion interior resonances with a single giant planet. These planetesimals are slowly removed through chaotic excursions of eccentricity that in time create highly eccentric orbits capable of tidally disrupting the planetesimal. These resonances require giant planets not much more massive than Jupiter, or else relic planetesimals do not survive in sufficient numbers. Numerical simulations of the solar system show that a sufficent number of planetesimals are perturbed to explain a observed white dwarfs with both dust and metal pollution. Finally, we show that once a planetesimal is perturbed into a tidal crossing orbit, it will become disrupted, sometime within the first pass of the white dwarf, where a highly eccentric stream of debris forms the main reservoir for dust producing collisions. These simulations, in concert with observations of white dwarfs, place interesting limits on the frequency of planetary systems around main sequence stars, the frequency of planetesimal belts, and the probability that dust may obscure future terrestrial planet finding missions.

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