UV Surface Environments and Atmospheres of Earth-like Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs

Abstract

An Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf (WD) would be exposed to different UV environments than Earth, influencing both its atmospheric photochemistry and UV surface environment. Through the use of a coupled 1D climate-photochemistry code, we model atmospheres of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of WDs for surface temperatures between 6000 and 4000 K, corresponding to about 7 billion years of WD evolution, and discuss the evolution of planetary models in the HZ during that evolution.