The star formation history in the solar neighborhood as told by massive white dwarfs

Abstract

White dwarfs are the remnants of low and intermediate mass stars. Because of electron degeneracy, their evolution is just a simple gravothermal process of cooling. Recently, thanks to Gaia data, it has been possible to construct the luminosity function of massive (0.9 < M/Msun < 1.1) white dwarfs in the solar neighborhood (d < 100 pc). Since the lifetime of their progenitors is very short, the birth times of both, parents and daughters, are very close and allow to reconstruct the (effective) star formation rate. This rate started growing from zero during the early Galaxy and reached a maximum 6-7 Gyr ago. It declined and ~5 Gyr ago started to climb once more reaching a maximum 2 - 3 Gyr in the past and decreased since then. There are some traces of a recent star formation burst, but the method used here is not appropriate for recently born white dwarfs.

Accepted for publication in ApJL, 5 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (1)

• The initial-final mass relationship of white dwarfs revisited: effect on the luminosity function and mass distribution

Cited by in corpus (34)

• Current challenges in the physics of white dwarf stars
• $Gaia$ white dwarfs within 40 pc II: the volume-limited northern hemisphere sample
• Stars with Photometrically Young Gaia Luminosities Around the Solar System (SPYGLASS) I: Mapping Young Stellar Structures and their Star Formation Histories
• A Tale of Two Disks: Mapping the Milky Way with the Final Data Release of APOGEE
• Spectroscopic age estimates for APOGEE red-giant stars: Precise spatial and kinematic trends with age in the Galactic disc
• Characterizing epochs of star formation across the Milky Way disc using age-metallicity distributions of GALAH stars
• Toward Precision Cosmochronology: A New C/O Phase Diagram for White Dwarfs
• Evidence for $\gtrsim 4$ Gyr timescales of neutron star mergers from Galactic archaeology
• Buoyant crystals halt the cooling of white dwarf stars
• Axion Astrophysics
• Star formation history of the solar neighbourhood as told by Gaia
• The TIME Table: Rotation and Ages of Cool Exoplanet Host Stars
• The spectral evolution of white dwarfs: where do we stand?
• Local stellar formation history from the 40 pc white dwarf sample
• Stellar versus Galactic: The intensity of cosmic rays at the evolving Earth and young exoplanets around Sun-like stars
• Mapping radial abundance gradients with Gaia-ESO open clusters: Evidence of recent gas accretion in the Milky Way disk
• The APO-K2 Catalog. II. Accurate Stellar Ages for Red Giant Branch Stars across the Milky Way
• The Cooling of Massive White Dwarfs from Gaia EDR3
• Galactic Chemical Evolution Models Favor an Extended Type Ia Supernova Delay-Time Distribution
• The White Dwarfs of the Old, Solar Metallicity Open Star Cluster Messier 67: Properties and Progenitors
• The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg
• Evidence of Spectral Evolution on the white dwarf sample from the Gaia Mission
• Modelling chemical clocks -- Theoretical evidences of the space and time evolution of [s/alpha] in the Galactic disc with Gaia-ESO survey
• Characterising abundance-age relations of GALAH stars using oxygen-enhanced stellar models
• Recent star formation episodes in the Galaxy: impact on its chemical properties and the evolution of its abundance gradient
• Identification of new nearby white dwarfs using Gaia DR3
• Understanding the Baryon Cycle: Fueling Star Formation via Inflows in Milky Way-like Galaxies
• Potential Impact of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy on the Formation of Young O-rich Stars
• The New Astronomical Frontier of Interstellar Objects
• The bi-modal ${}^7$Li distribution of the Milky Way's thin-disk dwarf stars: The role of Galactic-scale events and stellar evolution
• Stellar Migration and Chemical Enrichment in the Milky Way Disc: A Hybrid Model
• White Dwarfs as Advanced Physics Laboratories. The Axion case
• The effects of unresolved double-degenerates in the white dwarf luminosity function
• A new method to retrieve the star formation history from white dwarf luminosity functions -- an application to the Gaia catalogue of nearby stars