Quiescent nuclear burning in low-metallicity white dwarfs

Understand

We discuss the impact of residual nuclear burning in the cooling sequences of hydrogen-rich DA white dwarfs with very low metallicity progenitors ($Z=0.0001$).

• These cooling sequences are appropriate for the study of very old stellar populations.
• The results presented here are the product of self-consistent, fully evolutionary calculations.
• Specifically, we follow the evolution of white dwarf progenitors from the zero-age main sequence through all the evolutionary phases, namely the core hydrogen-burning phase, the helium-burning phase, and the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase to the white dwarf stage.