With recent observations confirming exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs, there is growing interest in exploring and quantifying the habitability of temperate rocky planets around white dwarfs. In this work, the limits of the habitable zone of an Earth-like planet around a white dwarf are computed based on the incident stellar flux, and these limits are utilized to assess the duration of habitability at a given orbital distance. For a typical 0.6M⊙ white dwarf an Earth-like planet at ∼0.012 au could remain in the temporally evolving habitable zone, maintaining conditions to support life, for nearly 7 Gyr. Also, additional constraints on habitability are studied for the first time by imposing the requirement of receiving sufficient photon fluxes for UV-mediated prebiotic chemistry and photosynthesis. We demonstrate that these thresholds are comfortably exceeded by planets in the habitable zone. The prospects for detecting atmospheric biosignatures are also evaluated and shown to require integration times on the order of 1 hr or less for ongoing space observations with JWST.

中文翻译：

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生命存在的可能性并在围绕白矮星运行的类地行星上被探测


随着最近的观测证实了系外行星围绕白矮星运行，人们对探索和量化白矮星周围温带岩石行星的宜居性越来越感兴趣。在这项工作中，根据入射恒星通量计算了类地行星围绕白矮星的宜居带的极限，这些极限用于评估给定轨道距离下的宜居持续时间。对于一颗典型的 0.6M⊙ 白矮星来说，一颗海拔约 0.012 天文单位的类地行星可以保持在时间演变的宜居带中，维持支持生命的条件，近 7 Gyr。此外，通过要求为 UV 介导的益生元化学和光合作用接收足够的光子通量，首次研究了对宜居性的额外限制。我们证明，宜居带中的行星很容易超过这些阈值。还评估了检测大气生物特征的前景，并表明使用 JWST 进行持续的空间观测需要 1 小时或更短的积分时间。