Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 450, Issue 1, Pages 681-690Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stv570
Keywords
stars: evolution; stars: magnetic field; planetary systems; white dwarfs
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council under the European Union [320964]
- University of Warwick Chancellor's Scholarship
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- US Department of Energy Office of Science
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Little is known about the incidence of magnetic fields among the coolest white dwarfs. Their spectra usually do not exhibit any absorption lines as the bound-bound opacities of hydrogen and helium are vanishingly small. Probing these stars for the presence of magnetic fields is therefore extremely challenging. However, external pollution of a cool white dwarf by, e.g. planetary debris, leads to the appearance of metal lines in its spectral energy distribution. These lines provide a unique tool to identify and measure magnetism in the coolest and oldest white dwarfs in the Galaxy. We report the identification of seven strongly metal polluted, cool (T-eff < 8000 K) white dwarfs with magnetic field strengths ranging from 1.9 to 9.6 MG. An analysis of our larger magnitude-limited sample of cool DZ yields a lower limit on the magnetic incidence of 13 +/- 4 per cent, noticeably much higher than among hot DA white dwarfs.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available