Stream Title: Exploring the Physics of the Universe with White Dwarf Stars
Faculty Stream Leader: Don Winget
Research Educator/Contact: Mike Montgomery (mikemonastro.as.utexas.edu)
Course Syllabus
Course Labs
Course Brochure
Stream Video
List of Current Projects
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

• The Planets around the post-Common Envelope Binary NN Serpentis, Hessman, Frederic V.; Beuermann, Klaus; Dreizler, Stefan; Marsh, Tom R.; Parsons, Steven G.; Copperwheat, Chris M.; Winget, Don E.; Miller, George F.;Hermes, James J.; Schreiber, Matthias R.; Kley, Wilhelm; Dhillon, Vik S.; Littlefair, Stuart P., 2011, PLANETARY SYSTEMS BEYOND THE MAIN SEQUENCE: Proceedings of the International Conference. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 1331, 281-286
• 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
• 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
• A Status Report on a Planet Search Around White Dwarf Stars, Hermes, J. J.; Mullally, F.; Winget, D. E.; Montgomery, M. H.; Miller, G. F.; Ellis, J. L., 2010, AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 1273, 446-449
• Creating White Dwarf Photospheres in the Laboratory, Falcon, R. E., Rochau, G. A., Bailey, J. E., Ellis, J. L., Montgomery, M. H., Winget, D. E., Gomez, M. R., Leeper, R. J., 2010, AIP Conference Proceedings, 1273(1), 436
• 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

Reference Materials

• Press release on the discovery of the shortest known period of a double degenerate binary system
• 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 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