Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Physical Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
8-2-2017
Abstract/Description
The rapidly evolving dust and gas extinction observed towardsWD1145+017 has opened a real-time window onto the mechanisms for destruction-accretion of planetary bodies onto white dwarf stars, and has served to underline the importance of considering the dynamics of dust particles around such objects. Here it is argued that the interaction between (charged) dust grains and the stellar magnetic field is an important ingredient in understanding the physical distribution of infrared emitting particles in the vicinity of such white dwarfs. These ideas are used to suggest a possible model for WD 1145+017 in which the unusual transit shapes are caused by opaque clouds of dust trapped in the stellar magnetosphere. The model can account for the observed transit periodicities if the stellar rotation is near 4.5 h, as the clouds of trapped dust are then located near or within the co-rotation radius. The model requires the surface magnetic field to be at least around some tens of kG. In contrast to the eccentric orbits expected for large planetesimals undergoing tidal disintegration, the orbits of magnetospherically-trapped dust clouds are essentially circular, consistent with the observations.
Publication Title
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slx122
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Scholarly Commons Citation
Farihi, J., von Hippel, T., & Pringle, J. (2017). Magnetospherically-Trapped Dust and a Possible Model for the Unusual Transits at WD1145+017. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 471(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slx122
Included in
Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons, Stars, Interstellar Medium and the Galaxy Commons
