High-velocity white dwarfs: thick disk, not dark matter

Details High-velocity white dwarfs: thick disk, not dark matter High-velocity white dwarfs: thick disk, not dark matter

2001-04-05

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104110v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11 pages, 5 figures; accepted for ApJ, 29 May 2001

Scientific paper

10.1086/322362

We present an alternative interpretation of the nature of the extremely cool, high-velocity white dwarfs identified by Oppenheimer et al (2001) in a high-latitude astrometric survey. We argue that the velocity distribution of the majority of the sample is more consistent with the high-velocity tail of a rotating population, probably the thick disk, rather than a pressure-supported halo system. Indeed, the observed numbers are well matched by predictions based on the kinematics of a complete sample of nearby M dwarfs. Analysing only stars showing retrograde motion gives a local density close to that expected for white dwarfs in the stellar (R^-3.5) halo. Under our interpretation, none of the white dwarfs need be assigned to the dark-matter, heavy halo. However, luminosity functions derived from observations of these stars can set important constraints on the age of the oldest stars in the Galactic Disk.

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