Analyse de l'absorption circumstellaire de WD 1145+017
WD 1145+017 is a metal polluted white dwarf with an actively disintegrating asteroid orbiting around it. This system is the first to show the active decomposition phase of the accretion process. The different observed data show a complex system composed of many pieces of the rocky objets, a dust disk and a gaseous disk, all orbiting the polluted white dwarf. We present an eccentric precessing gas disk model designed to study the variable circumstellar absorption features detected for WD 1145+017. This model, inspired by one recently proposed by Cauley et al., calculates explicitly the gas opacity for any predetermined physical conditions in the disk, predicting the strength and shape of all absorption features, from the UV to the optical, at any given phase of the precession cycle. The successes and failures of this simple model provide valuable insight on the physical characteristics of the gas surrounding the star, notably its composition, temperature and density. This eccentric disk model also highlights the need for supplementary components, most likely circular rings, in order to explain the presence of zero velocity absorption as well as highly ionized Si lines. We find that a precession period of 4.6±0.3 yrs can successfully reproduce the shape of the velocity profile observed at most epochs from April 2015 to January 2018, although minor discrepancies at certain times indicate that the assumed geometric configuration may not be optimal yet. Finally, we show that our model can quantitatively explain the change in morphology of the circumstellar feature during transiting events.
White dwarf star Circumstellar disk Physics Astronomy and astrophysics