On the interpretation of white dwarf spectra

Following the line of research outlined by Strittmatter and Wickramasinghe (1971) and recently by Shipman (1972), attention was drawn to the study of convective zones in white dwarfs for various masses and chemical compositions, in order to understand some observational features of their spectra. According to the results, convection strongly depends on the mass of the star, forM<0.5 M_⊙, and low hydrogen abundancesX?0.2) are sufficient to decrease the extension of the He-convection zones with respect to pure-He models. It is shown that the existence of DB white dwarfs seems not in agreement with the accretion rates predicted by Bondi (1952), and that DB's must evolve into H-lacking white dwarfs.