论文标题
中间质量恒星成为磁白矮人
Intermediate-Mass Stars Become Magnetic White Dwarfs
论文作者
论文摘要
当一颗星星耗尽其核燃料时，它要么像超新星一样爆炸，要么静止会变成白色矮人，这是我们太阳质量的一半的物体，半径约为地球的半径。大约五分之一的白矮人表现出磁场的存在，其起源长期以来一直被争论为先前的进化阶段或二元相互作用的乘积。我们在这里报告了Gaia DR2数据库中年轻星团的两个巨大和磁白矮人成员的发现，而先前的论文中已经报道了第三个大型和磁性群集白矮人。这些恒星很可能是单星发展的产物，因此挑战了合并情景，作为产生磁白矮人的唯一方法。这些恒星的祖细胞质量都高于5个太阳能质量，只有另外两个簇白矮人，其距离已经用盖亚（Gaia）明确测量，其祖细胞的质量落在该范围内。磁性白色矮人的高发生率表明，中间质量的祖细胞更有可能产生磁性残余物，并且一部分磁白矮人从中间质量恒星中形成。
When a star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it either explodes as a supernova or more quiescently becomes a white dwarf, an object about half the mass of our Sun with a radius of about that of the Earth. About one fifth of white dwarfs exhibit the presence of magnetic fields, whose origin has long been debated as either the product of previous stages of evolution or of binary interactions. We here report the discovery of two massive and magnetic white dwarf members of young star clusters in the Gaia DR2 database, while a third massive and magnetic cluster white dwarf was already reported in a previous paper. These stars are most likely the product of single-star evolution and therefore challenge the merger scenario as the only way to produce magnetic white dwarfs. The progenitor masses of these stars are all above 5 solar masses, and there are only two other cluster white dwarfs whose distances have been unambiguously measured with Gaia and whose progenitors' masses fall in this range. This high incidence of magnetic white dwarfs indicates that intermediate-mass progenitors are more likely to produce magnetic remnants and that a fraction of magnetic white dwarfs forms from intermediate-mass stars.
