Speaker | Talk Date | Talk Series |
---|---|---|
John Debes | 30 July 2014 | Across HR 2014 Talks |
As the final endpoint of stellar evolution, at first glance white dwarfs don’t appear to be fertile grounds for the study of exoplanetary systems. Over the past twenty-seven years however, evidence has mounted that a significant fraction of white dwarfs might be hosts to relic planetary systems. The observable signatures planets are most easily detected as either an infrared excess due to dust orbiting a few tens of white dwarf radii away or through the presence of photospheric metal lines--both signatures of tidally disrupted minor bodies perturbed by larger planets into highly eccentric orbits. In this talk I will review the various observations of the dust component around WDs and link them to our understanding of the late stages of planetary system evolution. Firmly establish- ing this link is crucial for interpreting the composition of WD dust.