Evidence for Terrestrial Planetary System Remnants at White Dwarfs
J. Farihi

TL;DR
Recent observations provide strong evidence that rocky planetary bodies and asteroid-like debris can survive and be detected around white dwarfs, revealing insights into the fate of planetary systems after stellar evolution.
Contribution
This paper compiles and analyzes observational evidence supporting the existence of terrestrial planetary system remnants at white dwarfs, highlighting their composition, mass, and prevalence.
Findings
Asteroid analogs persist at a significant fraction of cool white dwarfs.
Debris from disrupted rocky bodies causes infrared excess and atmospheric pollution.
At least 20-30% of white dwarfs show evidence of planetary remnants.
Abstract
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope, both space- and ground-based data have supported a picture whereby asteroid analogs persist at a significant fraction of cool white dwarfs, and are prone to tidal disruption when passing close to the compact stellar remnant. The ensuing debris can produce a detectable infrared excess, and the material gradually falls onto the star, polluting the atmosphere with heavy elements that can be used to determine the bulk composition of the destroyed planetary body. Based on the observations to date, the parent bodies inferred at white dwarfs are best described as asteroids, and have a distinctly rocky composition similar to…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
