Pulsating white dwarfs: new insights

Understand

White dwarf stars constitute the final evolutionary stage for more than 95 per cent of all stars.

• The Galactic population of white dwarfs conveys a wealth of information about several fundamental issues and are of vital importance to study the structure, evolution and chemical enrichment of our Galaxy and its components ---including the star formation history of the Milky Way.
• In addition, white dwarfs are tracers of the evolution of planetary systems along several phases of stellar evolution.
• Also, white dwarfs are used as laboratories for astro-particle physics, being their interest focused on physics beyond the standard model.