Apps/RotatingWhiteDwarfs

Rotationally Flattened White Dwarfs

Example Equilibria

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Example Equilibrium Configurations

Uniform Rotation

• R. A. James (1964), 140, 552

Structures have been determined for axially symmetric [uniformly] rotating gas masses, in the polytropic and white-dwarf cases … Physical parameters for the rotating configurations were obtained for values of n < 3, and for a range of white-dwarf configurations. The existence of forms of bifurcation of the axially symmetric series of equilibrium forms was also investigated. The white-dwarf series proved to lack such points of bifurcation, but they were found on the polytropic series for n < 0.808.

Differential Rotation

• J. P. Ostriker, P. Bodenheimer & D. Lynden-Bell (1966), Phys. Rev. Letters, 17, 816: Equilibrium Models of Differentially Rotating Zero-Temperature Stars

… work by Roxburgh (1965, Z. Astrophys., 62, 134), Anand (1965, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S., 54, 23), and James (1964, ApJ, 140, 552) shows that the [Chandrasekhar (1931, ApJ, 74, 81)] mass limit $M_3$ is increased by only a few percent when uniform rotation is included in the models, … In this Letter we demonstrate that white-dwarf models with masses considerably greater than $M_3$ are possible if differential rotation is allowed … models are based on the physical assumption of an axially symmetric, completely degenerate, self-gravitating fluid, in which the effects of viscosity, magnetic fields, meridional circulation, and relativistic terms in the hydrodynamical equations have been neglected.

• J. -L. Tassoul & J. P. Ostriker (1968), ApJ, 154, 613: On the Oscillations and Stability of Rotating Stellar Models. I. Mathematical Techniques
• J. P. Ostriker & J. -L. Tassoul (1969), ApJ, 155, 987: On the Oscillations and Stability of Rotating Stellar Models. II. Rapidly Rotating White Dwarfs
• R. H. Durisen (1975), ApJ, 195, 483: Viscous effects in rapidly rotating stars with application to white-dwarf models. III. Further numerical results
• R. H. Durisen (1975), ApJ, 199, 179: Upper mass limits for stable rotating white dwarfs
• R. H. Durisen & J. N. Imamura (1981), ApJ, 243, 612

Binary White Dwarfs

• I. Hachisu, Y. Eriguchi & K. Nomoto (1986a), ApJ, 308, 161: Fate of Merging Double White Dwarfs
• I. Hachisu, Y. Eriguchi & K. Nomoto (1986b), ApJ, 311, 214: Fate of Merging Double White Dwarfs. II — Numerical Method
• W. Even & J. E. Tohline (2009), ApJSuppl., 184, 248: Constructing Synchronously Rotating Double White Dwarf Binaries

See Also

• Our discussion of Rotating Polytropes: Example Equilibria
• Fission Theory of Binary Star Formation