Finding rocky asteroids around white dwarfs by their periodic thermal emission

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to detect small rocky asteroids around white dwarfs by observing their periodic thermal emission variations, enabling new insights into planetary formation around these stars.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observational technique leveraging thermal flux variations to identify small rocky objects orbiting white dwarfs, with potential detection capabilities using ground-based telescopes and JWST.

Findings

Ground-based telescopes can detect objects as small as 1% of the lunar mass around Sirius B.

JWST could detect objects as small as 0.001 lunar masses around nearby white dwarfs.

The method provides a new way to study minor planets and planetary formation around white dwarfs.

Abstract

Since white dwarfs are small, the contrast between the thermal emission of an orbiting object and a white dwarf is dramatically enhanced compared to a main sequence host. Furthermore, rocky objects much smaller than the moon have no atmospheres and are tidally locked to the white dwarf. We show that this leads to temperature contrasts between their day and night side of order unity that should lead to temporal variations in infrared flux over an orbital period of $\sim 0.2$ to $\sim 2$ days. Ground based telescopes could detect objects with a mass as small as $1\%$ of the lunar mass $M_L$ around Sirius B with a few hours of exposure. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be able to detect objects as small as $10^{-3} M_L$ around most nearby white dwarfs. The tightest constraints will typically be placed on 12,000 K white dwarfs, whose Roche zone coincides with the dust sublimation zone. Constraining the abundance of minor planets around white dwarfs as a function of their surface temperatures (and therefore age) provides a novel probe for the physics of planetary formation.