Related papers: Revisiting the luminosity function of single halo …
We present a coherent and detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the population of hot white dwarfs. We assess the statistical significance of the hot end of the white dwarf luminosity function and the role played by the bolometric corrections…
Halo white dwarfs can provide important information about the properties and evolution of the galactic halo. In this paper we compute, assuming a standard IMF and updated models of white dwarf cooling, the expected luminosity function, both…
The white dwarf luminosity function has proven to be an excellent tool to study some properties of the galactic disk such as its age and the past history of the local star formation rate. The existence of an observational luminosity…
The white dwarf luminosity function is an important tool to understand the properties of the Solar neighborhood, like its star formation history, and its age. Here we present a population synthesis study of the white dwarf population within…
Although it a very narrow angle survey, the depth of the HDF results in its sampling a significant volume of the halo of our galaxy. Thus it is useful for the purposes of detecting (or placing upper limits on the distribution of)…
We present a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the population of the hot branch of the white dwarf luminosity function. We used the most up-to-date stellar evolutionary models and we implemented a full description of the observational…
The galactic halo likely grew over time in part by assembling smaller galaxies, the so-called building blocks. We investigate if the properties of these building blocks are reflected in the halo white dwarf (WD) population in the Solar…
A detailed analysis of halo white dwarf candidates is presented, which is based on model atmosphere fits to observed energy distributions built from photoelectric or photographic magnitudes. Most of the candidates identified in reduced…
In order to understand the dynamical and chemical evolution of our Galaxy it is of fundamental importance to study the local neighborhood. White dwarf stars are ideal candidates to probe the history of the solar neighborhood, since these…
Aims: We study single and binary white dwarfs in the inner halo of the Milky Way in order to learn more about the conditions under which the population of halo stars was born, such as the initial mass function (IMF), the star formation…
White dwarfs are the final remnants of low- and intermediate-mass stars. Their evolution is essentially a cooling process that lasts for $\sim 10$ Gyr. Their observed properties provide information about the history of the Galaxy, its dark…
It has been known for a long time that stellar metallicity plays a significant role in the determination of the ages of the different Galactic stellar populations, when main sequence evolutionary tracks are employed. Here we analyze the…
Motivated by recent measurements which suggest that roughly half the mass of the galactic halo may be in the form of white dwarfs, we study the implications of such a halo. We first use current limits on the infrared background light and…
The luminosity function of white dwarfs is a powerful tool for studies of the evolution and formation of the Milky Way. The (theoretical) white dwarf cooling sequence provides a useful indicator of the evolutionary time scales involved in…
Using stellar population synthesis techniques, we explore the photometric signatures of white dwarf progenitor dominated galactic halos, in order to constrain the fraction of halo mass that may be locked-up in white dwarf stellar remnants.…
A number of so-called ultra-cool white dwarfs have been detected in different surveys so far. However, based on anecdotal evidence it is believed that most or all of these ultra-cool white dwarfs are low-mass products of binary evolution…
Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations have unveiled the white dwarf cooling sequence of the Galactic bulge. Although the degenerate sequence can be well fitted employing the most up-to-date theoretical cooling sequences, observations…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a simple gravothermal process. This means that their luminosity function, i.e. the number of white dwarfs per unit bolometric magnitude and unit volume as a function of bolometric magnitude, is a…
The white dwarf luminosity function of a stellar cluster will have a sharp truncation at a luminosity which is determined by the time since formation of the first white dwarfs in that cluster. Calculation of the dependence of this limiting…
NGC 6791 is a well-studied, metal-rich open cluster that is so close to us that can be imaged down to luminosities fainter than that of the termination of its white dwarf cooling sequence, thus allowing for an in-depth study of its white…