Related papers: White dwarf cooling sequences and cosmochronology

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has allowed us to increase the number of known white dwarfs by a factor of five and consequently the number of known pulsating white dwarfs also by a factor of five. It has also led to the discovery of new types…

We examine the claim by Oppenheimer et al. (2001) that the local halo density of white dwarfs is an order of magnitude higher than previously thought. As it stands, the observational data support the presence of a kinematically distinct…

We determine the possible masses and radii of the progenitors of white dwarfs in binaries from fits to detailed stellar evolution models and use these to reconstruct the mass-transfer phase in which the white dwarf was formed. We confirm…

We examine the luminosity function of white dwarfs (WDs) in the local ``complete'' WD sample ($d<20$ pc) of Holberg et. al. 2008. We find that the fraction of bright and young WDs is anomalously high among the WDs detected in multiple…

Substellar multiplicity is a key outcome of the formation process. The biggest challenge for the next decade will be to distinguish between the formation history, environmental conditions, and dynamical evolution leading to the least…

White dwarf (WD) stars evolve simply and predictably, making them reliable age indicators. However, self-consistent validation of the methods for determining WD total ages has yet to be widely performed. This work uses 1565 wide ( > 100 au)…

It has been shown that the shape of the luminosity function of white dwarfs (WDLF) is a powerful tool to check for the possible existence of DFSZ-axions, a proposed but not yet detected type of weakly interacting particles. With the aim of…

The hierarchical clustering inherent in Lambda-CDM cosmology seems to produce many of the observed characteristics of large-scale structure. But some glaring problems still remain, including the over-prediction (by a factor 10) of the…

Population III stars are characterized by extremely low metallicities as they are thought to be formed from a pristine gas in the early Universe. Although the existence of Population III stars is widely accepted, the lack of direct…

We make use of the high photometric precision of Kepler to search for periodic modulations among 14 normal (DA- and DB-type, likely non-magnetic) hot white dwarfs (WDs). In five, and possibly up to seven of the WDs, we detect periodic, ~2…

We collected F606W- and F814W-band time-series data of the Sagittarius low-reddening window in the Galactic bulge with the Advanced Camera far Surveys mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope. We sampled the region approximately every two…

Motivated by the strong discrepancy between the main sequence turn-off age and the white dwarf cooling age in the metal-rich open cluster NGC 6791, we compute a grid of white dwarf evolutionary sequences that incorporates for the first time…

The contribution of white dwarfs of the different Galactic populations to the stellar content of our Galaxy is only poorly known. Some authors claim a vast population of halo white dwarfs, which would be in accordance with some…

With the state-of-the-art Gaia astrometry, the number of confirmed white dwarfs has reached a few hundred thousand. We have reached the era where small features in the white dwarf luminosity function (WDLF) of the solar neighbourhood can be…

White dwarfs (WDs) can be used as laboratories to test strong gravity and high-density regimes, once their equation of state is not so uncertain as the one of neutron stars. This makes them also a useful tool to constrain dark-matter…

NGC 6397 is one of the most interesting, well observed and theoretically studied globular clusters. The existing wealth of observations allows us to study the reliability of the theoretical white dwarf cooling sequences of low metallicity…

We consider the evolution of white dwarfs with compact object companions (specifically black holes with masses up to 10^6 solar masses, neutron stars, and other white dwarfs). We suppose that the orbits are initially quite elliptical and…

We have extended our detailed survey of the local white dwarf population from 20 pc to 25 pc, effectively doubling the sample volume, which now includes 232 stars. In the process new stars within 20 pc have been added, a more uniform set of…

Oppenheimer et al. (2001) have argued recently that at least 2% of the Galactic halo is comprised of white dwarfs If true, this finding has crucial implications for understanding the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. We draw…

Ultra-massive white dwarfs are powerful tools to study various physical processes in the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB), type Ia supernova explosions and the theory of crystallization through white dwarf asteroseismology. Despite the…