The luminosity function of massive white dwarfs

Details The luminosity function of massive white dwarfs The luminosity function of massive white dwarfs

Feb 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994a%26a...282...86d&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 282, no. 1, p. 86-92

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

24

Cooling Flows (Astrophysics), Massive Stars, Rates (Per Time), Solar Neighborhood, Star Formation, Stellar Luminosity, Stellar Models, White Dwarf Stars, Hot Stars, Mathematical Models, Stellar Mass, Stellar Temperature

Scientific paper

The obtention of the star formation rate (SFR) in the solar neighborhood from the white dwarf luminosity function has been recently considered by different authors. However, the white dwarf luminosity function has contributions of white dwarfs of all masses. Thus, at any luminosity, extremely different evolutionary times are involved. As a consequence, deconvolving the SFR from the white dwarf luminosity function becomes a difficult task. Here we present a method to obtain the star formation rate in the solar neighborhood from the luminosity function of massive white dwarfs, whose progenitors have very short main sequence lifetimes. This allows us to overcome the difficulties in deconvolving the SFR. For this purpose cooling sequences for C+O white dwarfs with masses ranging from 0.7 to 1.2 solar mass have been computed. We also present a preliminary observational luminosity function for massive white dwarfs which allows us to discuss our method. The usefulness of this method seems to be promising since observations of white dwarfs should only indicate if a white dwarf is massive and not the exact value of its mass.

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