The Cooling of CO White Dwarfs: Influence of the Internal Chemical Distribution

摘要

White dwarfs are the remnants of stars of low and intermediate masses on the main sequence. Since they have exhausted all of their nuclear fuel, their evolution is just a gravothermal process. The release of energy only depends on the detailed internal structure and chemical composition and on the proper- ties of the envelope equation of state and opacity; its consequences on the cooling curve (i.e., the lumi- nosity vs. time relationship) depend on the luminosity at which this energy is released.