On Possible Oxygen/Neon White Dwarfs: H1504+65 and the White Dwarf Donors in Ultracompact X-ray Binaries

摘要

We discuss the possibility to detect O/Ne white dwarfs by evi-dence for Ne overabundances. The hottest known WD, 111504+65, could be the only single WD for which we might be able to prove its O/Ne nature directly. Apart from this, strong Ne abundances are known or suspected only from bi-nary systems, namely from a few novae, and from a handful of LMXBs. We try to verify the hypothesis that the latter might host strongly ablated O/Ne WD donors, by abundance analyses of the accretion disks in these systems. In any case, to conclude on O/Ne WDs just by strong Ne overabundances is problem-atic, because Ne enrichment also occurs by settling of this species into the core of C/O WDs.