The white dwarf planet WD J0914+1914 b: barricading potential rocky pollutants?

Abstract

Abstract An ice giant planet was recently reported orbiting white dwarf WD J0914+1914 at an approximate distance of 0.07 au. The striking non-detection of rocky pollutants in this white dwarf’s photosphere contrasts with the observations of nearly every other known white dwarf planetary system. Here, I analyse the prospects for exterior extant rocky asteroids, boulders, cobbles, and pebbles to radiatively drift inward past the planet due to the relatively high luminosity ($0.1 \, \mathrm{L}_{\odot }$) of this particularly young (13 Myr) white dwarf. Pebbles and cobbles drift too slowly from Poynting–Robertson drag to bypass the planet, but boulders and asteroids are subject to the much stronger Yarkovsky effect. In this paper, I (i) place lower limits on the time-scales for these objects to reach the planet’s orbit, (ii) establish 3 m as the approximate limiting radius above which a boulder drifts too slowly to avoid colliding with the planet, and (iii) compute bounds on the fraction of boulders that succeed in traversing mean motion resonances and the planet’s Hill sphere to eventually pollute the star. Overall, I find that the planet acts as a barrier against rather than a facilitator for radiatively driven rocky pollution, suggesting that future rocky pollutants would most likely originate from distant scattering events.