2024AJ....167..248X

The chemical composition of an extrasolar planet is fundamental to its formation, evolution, and habitability. In this study, we explore a new way to measure the chemical composition of the building blocks of extrasolar planets by measuring the gas composition of the disrupted planetesimals around white dwarf stars. As a first attempt, we used the photoionization code CLOUDY to model the circumstellar gas emission around white dwarf Gaia J0611-6931 under some simplified assumptions. We found that most of the emission lines are saturated, and the line ratios approach the ratios of thermal emission; therefore, only lower limits to the number density can be derived. Silicon is the best-constrained element in the circumstellar gas, and we derived a lower limit of 10^10.3 cm^–3. In addition, we placed a lower limit on the total amount of gas to be 1.8 × 10¹⁹ g. Further study is needed to better constrain the parameters of the gas disk and connect it to other white dwarfs with circumstellar gas absorption.