Kepler and the seven dwarfs: detection of low-level day-timescale periodic photometric variations in white dwarfs

TL;DR

This study uses Kepler's high-precision photometry to detect low-level, day-timescale periodic variations in white dwarfs, exploring potential causes including rotation, magnetic activity, and planetary companions, with implications for WD rotation and planetary prevalence.

Contribution

It is the first to identify low-amplitude, short-term periodic variations in non-magnetic white dwarfs, suggesting possible new mechanisms or the presence of planetary companions.

Findings

Detected periodic variations in 5-7 white dwarfs with amplitudes 60-2000 ppm.

Proposed multiple potential explanations including rotation, magnetic effects, and planetary transits.

Indicates hot Jupiters may be common around white dwarfs.

Abstract

We make use of the high photometric precision of Kepler to search for periodic modulations among 14 normal (DA- and DB-type, likely non-magnetic) hot white dwarfs (WDs). In five, and possibly up to seven of the WDs, we detect periodic, ~2 hr to 10 d, variations, with semi-amplitudes of 60 - 2000 ppm, lower than ever seen in WDs. We consider various explanations: WD rotation combined with magnetic cool spots; rotation combined with magnetic dichroism; rotation combined with hot spots from an interstellar-medium accretion flow; transits by size ~50 - 200 km objects; relativistic beaming due to reflex motion caused by a cool companion WD; or reflection/re-radiation of the primary WD light by a brown-dwarf or giant-planet companion, undergoing illumination phases as it orbits the WD. Each mechanism could be behind some of the variable WDs, but could not be responsible for all five to seven variable cases. Alternatively, the periodicity may arise from UV metal-line opacity, associated with accretion of rocky material, a phenomenon seen in ~50% of hot WDs. Non-uniform UV opacity, combined with WD rotation and fluorescent optical re-emission of the absorbed UV energy, could perhaps explain our findings. Even if reflection by a planet is the cause in only a few of the seven cases, it would imply that hot Jupiters are very common around WDs. If some of the rotation-related mechanisms are at work, then normal WDs rotate as slowly as do peculiar WDs, the only kind for which precise rotation measurements have been possible to date. Followup observations for this sample, and the larger numbers of additional WDs now being monitored as part of the K2 Kepler mission extension, will soon discriminate among these possibilities.