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Orbit decay of 2-100 au planetary remnants around white dwarfs with no gravitational assistance from planets
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Veras, Dimitri, Birader, Yusuf and Zaman, Uwais (2022) Orbit decay of 2-100 au planetary remnants around white dwarfs with no gravitational assistance from planets. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 510 (3). pp. 3379-3388. doi:10.1093/mnras/stab3490
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WRAP-Orbit-decay-2-100-au-planetary-remnants-around-white-dwarfs-planets-2022.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1439Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab3490
Abstract
A widely-held assumption is that each single white dwarf containing observable rocky debris requires the presence of at least one terrestrial or giant planet to have gravitationally perturbed the progenitor of the debris into the star. However, these planets could have been previously been engulfed by the star or escaped the system, leaving behind asteroids, boulders, cobbles, pebbles, sand and dust. These remaining small bodies could then persist throughout the host star’s evolution into a white dwarf at ≈2 − 100 au scales, and then be radiatively dragged into the white dwarf without the help of a planet. Here we identify the parameter space and cooling ages for which this one metal-pollution mechanism is feasible by, for the first time, coupling Poynting-Robertson drag, the Yarkovsky effect and the YORP effect solely from rapidly dimming white dwarf radiation. We find that this no-planet pollution scenario is efficient for remnant 10−5 − 10−4 m dust up to about 80 au, 10−4 − 10−3 m sand up to about 25 au and 10−3 − 10−2 m small pebbles up to about 8 au, and perhaps 10−1 − 100 m small boulders up to tens of au. Further, young white dwarf radiation can spin up large strength-less boulders with radii 102 − 103 m to destruction, breaking them down into smaller fragments which then can be dragged towards the white dwarf. Our work hence introduces a planet-less metal-pollution mechanism that may be active in some fraction of white dwarf planetary systems.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Physics | ||||||||
| SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Orbital mechanics, Kuiper Belt, Asteroids, Satellites, Planets, White dwarf stars, Stars -- Evolution | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1365-2966 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 23 March 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 510 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 3379-3388 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/stab3490 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Publisher Statement: | This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society following peer review. The version of record Dimitri Veras, Yusuf Birader, Uwais Zaman, Orbit decay of 2–100 au planetary remnants around white dwarfs with no gravitational assistance from planets, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 510, Issue 3, March 2022, Pages 3379–3388 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab3490 | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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