2004/10/14 by P. M. Kowalski, Kowalski, P. M., D. Saumon +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0410358
6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the proceedings of 14th European Workshop on White Dwarfs
arxiv created 2004/10/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
The atmospheres of cool, helium-rich white dwarfs constitute an exotic and poorly explored physical regime of stellar atmospheres. Under physical conditions where the temperature varies from \rm 1000K to \rm 10000K, the density can reach values as large as \rm 2 g/cm3, and the pressure is as high as \rm 1 Mbar, the atmosphere is no longer an ideal gas and must be treated as a dense fluid. Helium atoms become strongly correlated and refraction effects are present. Opacity sources such as \rm He- free-free absorption must be calculated with a formalism that has never been applied to astrophysical opacities. These effects have been ignored in previous models of cool white dwarf atmospheres.