Pulsating White dwarfs: The poster child and the little devil

Conférence de Agnes Kim, Penn State Worthington Scranton

Résumé

98% of all stars, including our Sun 5.5 billion years from now, have ended or will end their lives as white dwarfs. Some white dwarfs pulsate and give us the opportunity to study their interiors through asteroseismology. In this talk, I report on the study of two of these stars. One for which we have a very nice pulsation spectrum built on almost two years of space acquired data (by the Kepler I mission) and another also observed by Kepler, but not nearly as well behaved. The first star allows us to place tight constraints on its internal makeup and provides results that can be placed in the context of stellar evolution. The second one tests the limits of the methods traditionally used in white dwarf asteroseismology and forces us to rethink these methods.

Présentée par le Groupe Astronomie et astrophysique du Département de physique de l'Université de Montréal. Cette conférence est destinée à des spécialistes dans le domaine de l'astrophysique et sera donnée en anglais.