934 research outputs found
Planet formation from the ejecta of common envelopes
The close binary system NN Serpentis must have gone through a common envelope
phase before the formation of its white dwarf. During this phase, a substantial
amount of mass was lost from the envelope. The recently detected orbits of
circumbinary planets are likely inconsistent with planet formation before the
mass loss.We explore whether new planets may have formed from the ejecta of the
common envelope and derive the expected planetary mass as a function of
radius.We employed the Kashi & Soker model to estimate the amount of mass that
is retained during the ejection event and inferred the properties of the
resulting disk from the conservation of mass and angular momentum. The
resulting planetary masses were estimated from models with and without
radiative feedback. We show that the observed planetary masses can be
reproduced for appropriate model parameters. Photoheating can stabilize the
disks in the interior, potentially explaining the observed planetary orbits on
scales of a few AU. We compare the expected mass scale of planets for 11
additional systems with observational results and find hints of two
populations, one consistent with planet formation from the ejecta of common
envelopes and the other a separate population that may have formed earlier. The
formation of the observed planets from the ejecta of common envelopes seems
feasible. The model proposed here can be tested through refined observations of
additional post-common envelope systems. While it appears observationally
challenging to distinguish between the accretion on pre-existing planets and
their growth from new fragments, it may be possible to further constrain the
properties of the protoplanetary disk through additional observations of
current planetary candidates and post-common envelope binary systems.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Accepted at A&
Long-term EXOTIME photometry and follow-up spectroscopy of the sdB pulsator HS 0702+6043
Pulsating subdwarf B (sdB) stars oscillate in short-period p-modes or
long-period g-modes. HS0702+6043 (DW Lyn) is one of a few objects to show
characteristics of both types and is hence classified as hybrid pulsator. It is
one of our targets in the EXOTIME program to search for planetary companions
around extreme horizontal branch objects. In addition to the standard exercise
in asteroseismology to probe the instantaneous inner structure of a star,
measured changes in the pulsation frequencies as derived from an O-C diagram
can be compared to theoretical evolutionary timescales. Based on the
photometric data available so far, we are able to derive a high-resolution
frequency spectrum and to report on our efforts to construct a multi-season O-C
diagram. Additionally, we have gathered time-resolved spectroscopic data in
order to constrain stellar parameters and to derive mode parameters as well as
radial and rotational velocities.Comment: 2 pages, JENAM 2008 proceedings, to be published in 'Communications
in Asteroseismology', 15
Spectral analysis of 636 white dwarf - M star binaries from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We present a catalog of 857 white dwarf (WD)-M binaries from the sixth data
release (DR6) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), most of which were
previously identified. For 636 of them, we complete a spectral analysis and
derive the basic parameters of their stellar constituents and their distances
from Earth. We attempt to measure fundamental parameters of these systems by
completing spectral analyses. We use a Chi^2 minimization technique to
decompose each combined spectrum and derive independent parameter estimates for
its components. Forty-one of the stellar duets in our spectroscopic sample are
optically resolved in their respective SDSS images. For these systems, we also
derive a minimum true spatial separation and a lower limit to their orbital
periods, typically which are some 10^4 yr. Spectra of 167 stellar duets show
significant hydrogen emission and in most cases no additional He i or He ii
features. We also find that 20 of the 636 WDs are fitted to be DOs, with 16
measured to have T_eff around 40,000 K. Furthermore, we identify 70 very
low-mass objects, which are secondaries of masses smaller than about 0.1 solar
masses, to be candidate substellar companions. Although various selection
effects may play a role, the fraction 6.4 % of WD-M star binaries with orbital
separations of around 500 AU is a criterion for evolutionary models of stellar
binary systems. Active M dwarfs are likely present in 155 Balmer-emitting
systems, corresponding to a fraction of 24.4 %. The excess of cool DOs is most
likely due to additional WDs in the DB-DO T_eff range, for which no detailed
fitting was completed. The trend of the M stars being closer to Earth than the
WD component is probably due to an underestimation of the theoretical M star
radii.Comment: accepted by A&A October 3, 2008, 15 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables; v2,
minor grammatical changes, essential changes in Sect. 5.
Hellman-Feynman operator sampling in Diffusion Monte Carlo calculations
Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations typically yield highly accurate
results in solid-state and quantum-chemical calculations. However, operators
that do not commute with the Hamiltonian are at best sampled correctly up to
second order in the error of the underlying trial wavefunction, once simple
corrections have been applied. This error is of the same order as that for the
energy in variational calculations. Operators that suffer from these problems
include potential energies and the density. This paper presents a new method,
based on the Hellman-Feynman theorem, for the correct DMC sampling of all
operators diagonal in real space. Our method is easy to implement in any
standard DMC code
Non-empirical hyper-generalized-gradient functionals constructed from the Lieb-Oxford bound
A simple and completely general representation of the exact
exchange-correlation functional of density-functional theory is derived from
the universal Lieb-Oxford bound, which holds for any Coulomb-interacting
system. This representation leads to an alternative point of view on popular
hybrid functionals, providing a rationale for why they work and how they can be
constructed. A similar representation of the exact correlation functional
allows to construct fully non-empirical hyper-generalized-gradient
approximations (HGGAs), radically departing from established paradigms of
functional construction. Numerical tests of these HGGAs for atomic and
molecular correlation energies and molecular atomization energies show that
even simple HGGAs match or outperform state-of-the-art correlation functionals
currently used in solid-state physics and quantum chemistry.Comment: v2: Major revison. Added information on relation to the gradient
expansion and to local hybrids, improved discussion of size consistency and
of performance relative to other functional
Interaction-Induced Spin Polarization in Quantum Dots
The electronic states of lateral many electron quantum dots in high magnetic
fields are analyzed in terms of energy and spin. In a regime with two Landau
levels in the dot, several Coulomb blockade peaks are measured. A zig-zag
pattern is found as it is known from the Fock-Darwin spectrum. However, only
data from Landau level 0 show the typical spin-induced bimodality, whereas
features from Landau level 1 cannot be explained with the Fock-Darwin picture.
Instead, by including the interaction effects within spin-density-functional
theory a good agreement between experiment and theory is obtained. The absence
of bimodality on Landau level 1 is found to be due to strong spin polarization.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Quantum Monte Carlo modelling of the spherically averaged structure factor of a many-electron system
The interaction and exchange-correlation contributions to the ground-state
energy of an arbitrary many-electron system can be obtained from a spherical
average of the wavevector-dependent diagonal structure factor (SF). We model
the continuous-k spherically averaged SF using quantum Monte Carlo calculations
in finite simulation cells. We thus derive a method that allows to
substantially reduce the troublesome Coulomb finite-size errors that are
usually present in ground-state energy calculations. To demonstrate this, we
perform variational Monte Carlo calculations of the interaction energy of the
homogeneous electron gas. The method is, however, equally applicable to
arbitrary inhomogeneous systems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Extracting convergent surface energies from slab calculations
The formation energy of a solid surface can be extracted from slab
calculations if the bulk energy per atom is known. It has been pointed out
previously that the resulting surface energy will diverge with slab thickness
if the bulk energy is in error, in the context of calculations which used
different methods to study the bulk and slab systems. We show here that this
result is equally relevant for state-of-the-art computational methods which
carefully treat bulk and slab systems in the same way. Here we compare
different approaches, and present a solution to the problem that eliminates the
divergence and leads to rapidly convergent and accurate surface energies.Comment: 3 revtex pages, 1 figure, in print on J. Phys. Cond. Mat
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