The University of Texas at Austin - UTexas.eduCollege of Natural Sciences - cns.utexas.edu

Exploring the Physics of the Universe with White Dwarf Stars

Stream Title: Exploring the Physics of the Universe with White Dwarf Stars
Faculty Stream Leader: Don Winget
Research Educator/Contact: Mike Montgomery (mikemon@astro.as.utexas.edu)
Course Syllabus
Course Labs
Videos of the lecture portion of the course
Course Brochure
Our FRI Stream Video
A CNS FRI Video featuring Don Winget and Kevin Luecke
List of Current Projects and presentation (pptx, pdf)
Stream-related Posters
Ipython App
FRI calendar for CNS

 




Our research group uses white dwarf stars to study many fundamental questions in physics and astronomy. These include:

  • What is the age of the universe?
  • What is the mass of the (hypothetical) axion particle?
  • How and when does crystallization occur in a dense stellar plasma?
  • How does convection operate in a high-gravity environment?
  • Are neutrinos emitted at the expected rate in white dwarf interiors?
  • Do white dwarf systems contain orbiting planets?
While these questions cover a wide variety of fields, they are all based on observations of pulsating white dwarf stars. The strength of our group is that we do both observation (i.e., "experiment") and theory. Thus, students in the Astronomy FRI stream get to see firsthand the interplay and feedback between the two, which is often more complex (and confusing!) than the traditional portrayal of the "scientific method." Significantly, this exposes students not only to our observational techniques and data reduction methods, but also to the theoretical models which underlie the observations.

In the Spring semester, students will learn the basic concepts involved in our research, such as harmonic motion and simple thermodynamics, and these will be illustrated in labs. They will also make computer-based "experiments" which will reinforce this knowledge and allow them to explore entirely new physical effects. During the Summer, they will travel to McDonald Observatory to obtain data for one of our many projects, and they will begin the reduction and analysis of this data. In the following Fall semester, they will finish this analysis and will place the data in the larger context of our ongoing programs. As appropriate, results will be readied for publication.


Simulation movie of the pulsating white dwarf GD 358



Simulation of Freezing in a One-component Plasma (N=100) in Spherical Geometry (avi)



Simulation of Freezing in a One-component Plasma (left: N=100; right: N=400) in Rectangular, "Wrapped" Geometry (avi1, avi2)



Simulation of 2D Convection in a White Dwarf Envelope (mp4-1, mp4-2)



FRI Publications with Student Co-authors

  • Empirical Determination of Convection Parameters in White Dwarfs. I. Whole Earth Telescope Observations of EC14012-1446, Provencal, J. L., Montgomery, M. H., Kanaan, A., Thompson, S. E., Dalessio, J., Shipman, H. L., Childers, D., Clemens, J. C., Rosen, R., Henrique, P., Bischoff-Kim, A., Strickland, W., Chandler, D., Walter, B., Watson, T. K., Castanheira, B., Wang, S., Handler, G., Wood, M., Vennes, S., Nemeth, P., Kepler, S. O., Reed, M., Nitta, A., Kleinman, S. J., Brown, T., Kim, S.-L., Sullivan, D., Chen, W. P., Yang, M., Shih, C. Y., Jiang, X. J., Sergeev, A. V., Maksim, A., Janulis, R., Baliyan, K. S., Vats, H. O., Zola, S., Baran, A., Winiarski, M., Ogloza, W., Paparo, M., Bognar, Z., Papics, P., Kilkenny, D., Sefako, R., Buckley, D., Loaring, N., Kniazev, A., Silvotti, R., Galleti, S., Nagel, T., Vauclair, G., Dolez, N., Fremy, J. R., Perez, J., Almenara, J. M., & Fraga, L., 2012, ApJ, 751, 91
  • The Z Astrophysical Plasma Properties (ZAPP) Collaboration, Montgomery, M. H., Bailey, J. E., Blancard, C., Carlson, A. L., Cohen, D., Cosse, P., Dunham, G., Durmaz, T., Ellis, J. L., Falcon, R. E., Faussurier, G., Gilleron, F., Golovkin, I., Gomez, M. R., Gomez, T., Hall, I., Hansen, S. B., Iglesias, C. A., Kernaghan, M., Lake, P. W., Liedahl, D., Lockard, T., MacArthur, J., MacFarlane, J. J., Mancini, R. C., Nahar, S. N., Nash, T. J., Nielsen, D. S., Pain, J. C., Pinsonneault, M., Pradhan, A. K., Rochau, G. A., Sherrill, M., & Winget, D. E., 2012, In American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, volume 219 of American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, 238.06
  • Developing an Experimental Platform to Create White Dwarf Photospheres in the Laboratory, Falcon, R., Rochau, G. A., Bailey, J. E., Ellis, J. L., Carlson, A. L., Gomez, T., Montgomery, M. H., Winget, D. E., & Gomez, M. R., 2012, In American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, volume 219 of American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, 238.07
  • Creation of White Dwarf Photospheres in the Laboratory, Ellis, J., Falcon, R. E., Rochau, G. A., Winget, D. E., Bailey, J. E., & Montgomery, M. H., 2011, In American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, volume 217 of American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, 433.24
  • The Planets around the post-Common Envelope Binary NN Serpentis, Hessman, F. V., Beuermann, K., Dreizler, S., Marsh, T. R., Parsons, S. G., Copperwheat, C. M., Winget, D. E., Miller, G. F., Hermes, J. J., Schreiber, M. R., Kley, W., Dhillon, V. S., & Littlefair, S. P., 2011, In American Institute of Physics Conference Series, ed. S. Schuh, H. Drechsel, & U. Heber, volume 1331 of American Institute of Physics Conference Series, 281
  • The giant planet orbiting the cataclysmic binary DP Leonis, Beuermann, K., Buhlmann, J., Diese, J., Dreizler, S., Hessman, F. V., Husser, T.-O., Miller, G. F., Nickol, N., Pons, R., Ruhr, D., Schmulling, H., Schwope, A. D., Sorge, T., Ulrichs, L., Winget, D. E., & Winget, K. I., 2011, A&A, 526, 53
  • Exploring the Universe with White Dwarf Stars: The First Year of the Freshman Research Initiative, Montgomery, M. H., Winget, D. E., Allen, A., Falcon, R. E., Gomez, J., Ellis, J., Havanur, V., Luecke, K., Melin, K., Miller, G., & Rendon, C., 2010, In New Horizons in Astronomy: Frank N. Bash Symposium 2009, ed. L. M. Stanford, J. D. Green, L. Hao, & Y. Mao, volume 432 of Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 225

FRI Publications without Student Co-authors

  • SDSS J184037.78+642312.3: The First Pulsating Extremely Low Mass White Dwarf, Hermes, J. J., Montgomery, M. H., Winget, D. E., Brown, W. R., Kilic, M., & Kenyon, S. J., 2012, ApJL, 750, L28
  • Discovery of a ZZ Ceti in the Kepler Mission Field, Hermes, J. J., Mullally, F., Ostensen, R. H., Williams, K. A., Telting, J., Southworth, J., Bloemen, S., Howell, S. B., Everett, M., & Winget, D. E., 2011, ApJL, 741, L16
  • SDSS J163030.58+423305.8: a 40-min orbital period detached white dwarf binary, Kilic, M., Brown, W. R., Hermes, J. J., Allende Prieto, C., Kenyon, S. J., Winget, D. E., & Winget, K. I., 2011, MNRAS, 418, L157
  • White Dwarf Stars in the HET Dark Energy Experiment, Castanheira, B., Winget, D., Gebhardt, K., Allende Prieto, C., Shetrone, M., Odewahn, S., Montgomery, M. H., 2012, In American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, volume 219 of American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts, 424.08
  • A 12 Minute Orbital Period Detached White Dwarf Eclipsing Binary, Brown, W. R., Kilic, M., Hermes, J. J., Allende Prieto, C., Kenyon, S. J., & Winget, D. E., 2011, ApJL, 737, L23
  • The pulsations of PG 1351+489, Redaelli, M., Kepler, S. O., Costa, J. E. S., Winget, D. E., Handler, G., Castanheira, B. G., Kanaan, A., Fraga, L., Henrique, P., Giovannini, O., Provencal, J. L., Shipman, H. L., Dalessio, J., Thompson, S. E., Mullally, F., Brewer, M. M., Childers, D., Oksala, M. E., Rosen, R., Wood, M. A., Reed, M. D., Walter, B., Strickland, W., Chandler, D., Watson, T. K., Nather, R. E., Montgomery, M. H., Bischoff-Kim, A., Hansen, C. J., Nitta, A., Kleinman, S. J., Claver, C. F., Brown, T. M., Sullivan, D. J., Kim, S.-L., Chen, W.-P., Yang, M., Shih, C.-Y., Zhang, X., Jiang, X., Fu, J. N., Seetha, S., Ashoka, B. N., Marar, T. M. K., Baliyan, K. S., Vats, H. O., Chernyshev, A. V., Ibbetson, P., Leibowitz, E., Hemar, S., Sergeev, A. V., Andreev, M. V., Janulis, R., Meistas, E. G., Moskalik, P., Pajdosz, G., Baran, A., Winiarski, M., Zola, S., Ogloza, W., Siwak, M., Bognr, Z., Solheim, J.-E., Sefako, R., Buckley, D., ODonoghue, D., Nagel, T., Silvotti, R., Bruni, I., Fremy, J. R., Vauclair, G., Chevreton, M., Dolez, N., Pfeiffer, B., Barstow, M. A., Creevey, O. L., Kawaler, S. D., Clemens, J. C., 2011, MNRAS, 415, 1220

Awards

  • A video on Kevin Luecke and his Student Employee of the Year Award.
  • A video on the FRI program which prominently features Don Winget and Kevin Luecke from our stream.
  • Kevin Luecke 2013 Astronomy Department's Outstanding Senior Award.
  • Jennifer Ellis wins a 3-year NSF Graduate Fellowship in Physics.
  • George Miller is the $20,000 Grand Prize winner of the 2012 George H. Mitchell Student Awards for Academic Excellence.

Reference Materials

  • A short article in Discover Magazine about our white dwarf photosphere experiments on the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratory
  • Press release on the discovery of the shortest known period of a double degenerate binary system
  • Three recent StarDate broadcasts featuring our science: White Dwarf Quakes, Cosmic Clocks, Star in a Bottle
  • A Perspective in Science describing recent seismology results with Kepler (Reprint, Summary)
  • Press release on the discovery of a new planet by students in the FRI White Dwarf Stream
  • A transcript of a StarDate radio broadcast about axions and white dwarf cooling
  • A brief report on the first year of the FRI White Dwarf Stream
  • A paper on the vibrating string analogy and its application to pulsating white dwarfs
  • A poster of the FRI White Dwarf Stream
  • A NASA site on Where White Dwarfs Come From
  • A really good introductory level article by Steve Kawaler and Michael Dahlstrom
  • Two Wikipedia entries on Stellar Evolution and the Main Sequence
  • UT Astronomy Colloquium by Don Winget (2008-Oct-14)
  • whitedwarf.org, a general reference site on white dwarfs relevant to the kind of science we do
  • Press release on a new class of pulsating white dwarfs we recently discovered
  • A popular article in Science News describing much of the science that can be done with white dwarf stars
  • A popular article in StarDate Magazine about the pulsations found in the Sun
  • An article in Science describing satellite observations of Solar-like stars
  • Review Article on white dwarf pulsations by Mike Montgomery presented at the Santa Fe pulsation conference in 2009
  • Graduate Lecture notes on stellar pulsation, given by Mike Montgomery at Cambridge University, UK, in Spring 2002 and 2004
  • Argos Online, a teacher workshop on white dwarfs
  • Live Observations from McDonald Observatory
  • Acoustics and Vibration Animations by Dan Russell, Kettering University
  • A list of Argos Manuals at McDonald Observatory
  • Argos User's Manual by Fergal Mullaly, Princeton University
  • WQED User's Manual by Susan Thompson and Fergal Mullally
  • SVSS Reduction Manual and IDL routines by Ross Falcon




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