White dwarf cooling sequences and cosmochronology

Abstract

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 monotonically increasing function that decreases abruptly as a consequence of the finite age of the Galaxy. The precision and the accuracy of the white dwarf luminosity functions obtained with the recent large surveys together with the improved quality of the theoretical models of evolution of white dwarfs allow to feed the hope that in a near future it will be possible to reconstruct the history of the different Galactic populations.

Proceedings of the 40th Liege International Astrophysical Colloquium: Aging low mass stars: from red giants to white dwarfs

References in corpus (5)

• White Dwarf Luminosity and Mass Functions from Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectra
• Gravitational settling of 22Ne and white dwarf evolution
• Axions and the white dwarf luminosity function
• New phase diagrams for dense carbon-oxygen mixtures and white dwarf evolution
• Outer boundary conditions for evolving cool white dwarfs

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Evolution of the Milky Way with radial motions of stars and gas I. The solar neighborhood and the thin and thick disk
• White Dwarfs constrain Dark Forces
• The Star Formation History of the Solar Neighbourhood from the White Dwarf Luminosity Function
• Axions and the luminosity function of white dwarfs. The thin and thick disks, and the halo
• Binary white dwarfs in the halo of the Milky Way
• Detection of the Temperature Dependence of the White Dwarf Mass-Radius Relation with Gravitational Redshifts
• Structural Implications of the Chameleon Mechanism on White Dwarfs