A temperature scale of 1~2 eV in the mass-radius relationship of white dwarfs of type DA

The mass-radius relationship of white dwarfs (WDs) is one of their defining characteristics, largely derived from electron degeneracy pressure. We present a model-independent study of the observed mass-radius relationship in WD binaries of {Parsons_2017}, listing data over a broad temperature range up to about 60,000 K (5 eV). The data show an appreciable temperature sensitivity with pronounced intrinsic scatter (beyond measurement uncertainty) for the canonical He-models with proton-to-neutron ratio 1:1. We characterize temperature sensitivity by a temperature scale T₀ in model-agnostic power-law relations with temperature normalized radius. For low-mass WDs, the results identify a remarkably modest T₀ = 1 ~ 2 eV. We comment on a potential interpretation for atmospheres insulating super-Eddington temperature cores from the sub-Eddington photospheres of low-mass WDs.