A Possible Indication of Metallic Iron in White Dwarf Dusty Disks from their "Dirtiness"

TL;DR

This study investigates the presence of metallic iron in the dust disks around white dwarfs, showing that iron-bearing dust better explains near-infrared spectra and suggesting a link between stellar and dust composition.

Contribution

It introduces a spectral modeling approach that incorporates metallic iron in dust, improving fits to observed white dwarf disk spectra and constraining dust composition.

Findings

Metallic iron enhances near-infrared opacity in dust models.

Best-fit metal-to-silicate ratio is approximately unity.

Fe-rich silicates cannot be ruled out as an alternative explanation.

Abstract

Polluted white dwarfs provide unique constraints on the elemental compositions of planetary bodies. The tidal disruption of accreting bodies is thought to form circumstellar dusty disks, whose emission spectra could offer additional insights into the mineral phases of the accreted solid material. Silicates are detected in the mid-infrared spectra of several disks, but do not fully account for the near-infrared excess in the disks' spectra. Conductive materials, such as metallic iron, are potential sources of near-infrared emissivity. We investigate the role of metallic iron within silicate dust in the observed spectra of the white dwarfs G29-38 and GD56. Using thermal emission spectra calculations, we analyze the abundance of metallic iron in the dust and the disk structure parameters that best fit the observed spectra. We find that metallic-iron-bearing dust enhances the near-infrared opacity, thereby providing a better fit to the G29-38 spectrum for various silicate compositions than metallic-iron-free dust. The best-fit metal-to-silicate mixing ratio is approximately unity, and for Mg-rich pyroxenes, this value is also consistent with G29-38's stellar atmospheric composition within 1-$\sigma$ observational uncertainties. Based on the spectral fitting and compositional consistency, Fe-rich silicates without metallic iron cannot be ruled out. The observed GD56 spectrum also favors iron-bearing dust. However, the large observational uncertainties of GD56's stellar elemental abundances hinder a precise comparison between the stellar and dust iron abundances. Upcoming high-precision JWST observations will provide a larger sample, enabling statistical analysis of the correlation between the iron abundances in the atmospheres and circumstellar dust of polluted white dwarfs.