Slowly cooling white dwarfs in M13 from stable hydrogen burning

TL;DR

This study reveals that a significant fraction of white dwarfs in M13 exhibit slowed cooling due to stable hydrogen burning, challenging previous assumptions and impacting their use as cosmic age indicators.

Contribution

First observational evidence of stable thermonuclear burning in cooling white dwarfs, affecting their cooling rates and age estimations in low metallicity environments.

Findings

Over-abundance of bright white dwarfs in M13

70% of WDs show slowed cooling due to hydrogen burning

Implications for using WD cooling as cosmic chronometer

Abstract

White Dwarfs (WDs) are the final evolutionary product of the vast majority of stars in the Universe. They are electron-degenerate structures characterized by no stable thermonuclear activity, and their evolution is generally described as a pure cooling process. Their cooling rate is adopted as cosmic chronometer to constrain the age of several Galactic populations, including the disk, globular and open clusters. By analysing high-resolution photometric data of two twin Galactic globular clusters (M3 and M13), we find a clear-cut and unexpected over-abundance of bright WDs in M13. Theoretical models suggest that, consistently with the horizontal branch morphology, this over-abundance is due to a slowing down of the cooling process in ~70% of the WDs in M13, caused by stable thermonuclear burning in their residual hydrogen-rich envelope. This is the first observational evidence of quiescent thermonuclear activity occurring in cooling WDs and it brings new attention on the use of the WD cooling rate as cosmic chronometer for low metallicity environments.