Hydrogen delivery onto white dwarfs from remnant exo-Oort cloud comets

TL;DR

This study investigates how the accretion of exo-Oort cloud comets onto white dwarfs can explain the observed trace hydrogen, using detailed numerical simulations considering various stellar and galactic influences over billions of years.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive model of comet accretion onto white dwarfs, incorporating realistic dynamics and cloud architectures, to explain trace hydrogen accumulation.

Findings

Approximately 10^{-5} of exo-Oort cloud material accretes onto WDs.

Trace hydrogen deposits can reach 10^{22}-10^{25} grams in older WDs.

Exo-Oort comets are unlikely to be the main source of metals in polluted WDs.

Abstract

The origin of trace hydrogen in white dwarfs (WDs) with He-dominated atmospheres is a long-standing problem, one that cannot satisfactorily be explained by the historically-favoured hypothesis of accretion from the interstellar medium. Here we explore the possibility that the gradual accretion of exo-Oort cloud comets, which are a rich source of H, contributes to the apparent increase of trace H with WD cooling age. We determine how often remnant exo-Oort clouds, freshly excited from post-main-sequence stellar mass loss, dynamically inject comets inside the WD's Roche radius. We improve upon previous studies by considering a representative range of single WD masses (0.52-1.00 Solar masses) and incorporating different cloud architectures, giant branch stellar mass loss, stellar flybys, Galactic tides and a realistic escape ellipsoid in self-consistent numerical simulations that integrate beyond 8 Gyr ages of WD cooling. We find that about 10^{-5} of the material in an exo-Oort cloud is typically amassed onto the WD, and that the H deposits accumulate even as the cloud dissipates. This accumulation may account for the relatively large amount of trace H, 10^{22}-10^{25} g, that is determined frequently among WDs with cooling ages >= 1 Gyr. Our results also reaffirm the notion that exo-Oort cloud comets are not the primary agents of the metal budgets observed in polluted WD atmospheres.