Kinematical and Statistical Study of Magnetic White Dwarfs

Details Kinematical and Statistical Study of Magnetic White Dwarfs Kinematical and Statistical Study of Magnetic White Dwarfs

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...20910308s&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #103.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We present the results of a kinematical analysis of all known magnetic white dwarfs in the web-based Villanova White Dwarf Catalog (http://www.astronomy.villanova.edu/WDCatalog/) for which there are sufficient data to estimate the vector components of the space motion, U, V, W, with respect to the sun. This sample of magnetic degenerates consists of 43 stars with field strengths ranging from 0.5 MG to 700 MG and Teff ranging from 4500K to 40,000K. The magnetics are subdivided into ''hot'' and ''cool'' samples for comparison with the motions and velocity dispersions of non-magnetic DA stars in the same ranges of Mv. The average velocities , , and the velocity dispersions σ (U), σ (V) and σ (W) in the ''hot'' and ''cool'' ranges of Mv are all substantially smaller than the non-magnetic DA values in same Mv ranges. This result is consistent with higher than average magnetic white dwarf masses. We discuss implications of our study for identifying the progenitors of the magnetic white dwarfs.
We acknowledge with gratitude the support of this work by NSF grant 05-07797.