2004/08/12 by A. H. Córsico, A. H. Corsico, E. Garcia-Berro +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20040416
published as Astron.Astrophys. 427 (2004) 923-932 · 11 pages, including 11 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics
arxiv created 2004/08/12 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We explore the adiabatic pulsational properties of massive white dwarf stars with hydrogen-rich envelopes and oxygen/neon and carbon/oxygen cores. To this end, we compute the cooling of massive white dwarf models for both core compositions taking into account the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars and the chemical evolution caused by time-dependent element diffusion. In particular, for the oxygen/neon models we adopt the chemical profile resulting from repeated carbon-burning shell flashes expected in very massive white dwarf progenitors. For carbon/oxygen white dwarfs we consider the chemical profiles resulting from phase separation upon crystallization. For both compositions we also take into account the effects of crystallization on the oscillation eigenmodes. We find that the pulsational properties of oxygen/neon white dwarfs are noticeably different from those made of carbon/oxygen, thus making asteroseismological techniques a promising way to distinguish between the two types of stars and, hence, to obtain valuable information about their progenitors.