Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Xu, Siyi
• Yeh, Sherry
• Rogers, Laura. K.
• Steele, Amy
• Dennihy, Erik
• Doyle, Alexandra E.
• Dufour, P.
• Klein, Beth L.
• Manser, Christopher J.
• Melis, Carl
• Wang, Tinggui
• Weinberger, Alycia J.

Titel

Modeling Circumstellar Gas Emission around a White Dwarf Using cloudy

Ist Teil von

• The Astronomical journal, 2024-05, Vol.167 (5), p.248

Ort / Verlag

Madison: The American Astronomical Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Abstract The chemical composition of an extrasolar planet is fundamental to its formation, evolution, and habitability. In this study, we explore a new way to measure the chemical composition of the building blocks of extrasolar planets by measuring the gas composition of the disrupted planetesimals around white dwarf stars. As a first attempt, we used the photoionization code Cloudy to model the circumstellar gas emission around white dwarf Gaia J0611−6931 under some simplified assumptions. We found that most of the emission lines are saturated, and the line ratios approach the ratios of thermal emission; therefore, only lower limits to the number density can be derived. Silicon is the best-constrained element in the circumstellar gas, and we derived a lower limit of 10 10.3 cm −3 . In addition, we placed a lower limit on the total amount of gas to be 1.8 × 10 19 g. Further study is needed to better constrain the parameters of the gas disk and connect it to other white dwarfs with circumstellar gas absorption.