Candidate Planets Transiting White Dwarf Stars in Zwicky Transient Facility Data

The vast majority of main sequence stars host exoplanets, and the vast majority of stars conclude their evolution as roughly Earth-sized white dwarf stars; therefore, we expect the majority of white dwarfs to host exoplanets. Searching for exoplanet transits of white dwarfs requires different approaches than other areas of exoplanet research, since the compact stars in this case can be totally eclipsed by their larger planets. In this talk, I detail the observational properties of such transits and demonstrate that multiple transits of white dwarfs are likely buried in our current volume of ground-based survey photometry. I share my current approaches to uncovering these systems in public data from the Zwicky Transient Facility and confirming them with ground-based follow-up observations at Apache Point Observatory. Comparing the population of exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs to their progenitor systems are needed to constrain theories of planetary migration during post-main-sequence evolution.