Thermal history of white dwarf pollutants

This project aims at investigating the thermal evolution (differentiation and volatile loss) of planetesimals from formation until tidal disruption inside the Roche limit of the white dwarf, to probe the formation processes (e.g., constrain the age) of the planetary system.

We simulate the evolution of the temperature profile inside primitive planetesimals experiencing no thermal processing (e.g., radiogenic decay), via advection-diffusion equation, to evaluate the parameter space of differentiation/volatile loss triggered by stellar flux and/or tidal heating.

The size of the parameter space indicates whether radiogenic decay is essential for differentiation and the fraction of volatiles lost during stellar evolution.