The seismic properties of low-mass He-core white dwarf stars

TL;DR

This study investigates the pulsational properties of low-mass He-core white dwarfs using detailed evolutionary models, revealing how stellar parameters and diffusion processes influence their seismic behavior and stability domains.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive pulsational analysis of low-mass He-core white dwarfs considering full evolutionary history and element diffusion effects.

Findings

ELM white dwarfs' g-modes probe core regions with minimal mode trapping.

Element diffusion significantly alters the period spectrum.

The model predicts pulsations consistent with observed variable low-mass white dwarfs.

Abstract

We present here a detailed pulsational study applied to low-mass He-core white dwarfs, based on full evolutionary models representative of these objects. The background stellar models on which our pulsational analysis was carried out were derived by taking into account the complete evolutionary history of the progenitor stars, with special emphasis on the diffusion processes acting during the white dwarf cooling phase. We computed nonradial $g$-modes to assess the dependence of the pulsational properties of these objects with stellar parameters such as the stellar mass and the effective temperature, and also with element diffusion processes. We also performed a g- and p-mode pulsational stability analysis on our models and found well-defined blue edges of the instability domain, where these stars should start to exhibit pulsations. We found substantial differences in the seismic properties of white dwarfs with $M_* \gtrsim 0.20 M_{\odot}$ and the extremely low-mass (ELM) white dwarfs ($M_* \lesssim 0.20 M_{\odot}$). Specifically, $g$-mode pulsation modes in ELM white dwarfs mainly probe the core regions and are not dramatically affected by mode-trapping effects by the He/H interface, whereas the opposite is true for more massive He-core white dwarfs. We found that element diffusion processes substantially affects the shape of the He/H chemical transition region, leading to non-negligible changes in the period spectrum of low-mass white dwarfs. Our stability analysis successfully predicts the pulsations of the only known variable low-mass white dwarf (SDSS J184037.78+642312.3), and also predicts both $g$- and $p$-mode pulsational instabilities in a significant number of known low-mass and ELM white dwarfs.