Halo White Dwarfs, Thick Disks and a Sanity Check

Abstract

The discovery of a population of high proper motion white dwarfs by Oppenheimer et al (2001) has caused a lot of speculation as to the origin of these stars. I show that the age distribution of the white dwarfs offers a kind of sanity check in these discussions. In particular, this population appears to have a similar age distribution to those in the standard, thin disk white dwarf population. This is not what is expected for either the halo or thick disk, which are thought to be old populations. It may indicate a different dynamical origin entirely, or it may be just be the tail of a larger distribution, implying a significantly larger total density in even older white dwarfs.

TeX, Submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters

References in corpus (2)

• Direct Detection of Galactic Halo Dark Matter
• High-velocity white dwarfs: thick disk, not dark matter

Cited by in corpus (24)

• The White Dwarf Cooling Sequence of the Globular Cluster Messier 4
• The White Dwarf Luminosity Function from SDSS Imaging Data
• 3D kinematics of white dwarfs from the SPY project II
• 3D kinematics of white dwarfs from the SPY project
• High proper motion white dwarfs and halo dark matter
• On the Interpretation of High Velocity White Dwarfs as Members of the Galactic Halo
• Random Forest identification of the thin disk, thick disk and halo Gaia-DR2 white dwarf population
• Type Ia Supernovae and High Velocity White Dwarfs
• The Galactic Inner Halo: Searching for White Dwarfs and Measuring the Fundamental Galactic Constant, Vo/Ro
• White dwarfs and Galactic dark matter
• On the Possible Sources of D/H Dispersion at High Redshift
• A Critical Examination of Halo White Dwarf Candidates
• A Proper Motion Survey for White Dwarfs with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
• EROS 2 proper motion survey: Constraints on the halo white dwarfs
• A source of high-velocity white dwarfs
• Absolute Proper Motions to B~22.5: IV. Faint, Low Velocity White Dwarfs and the White Dwarf Population Density Law
• Disk or Halo white dwarfs? Kinematic analysis of high proper motion surveys
• Simulating a White Dwarf-dominated Galactic Halo
• Dynamical limits on galactic winds, halo machos and intergalactic globular clusters
• The glow of primordial remnants
• Microlensing signature of a white dwarf population in the galactic halo
• Photometric constraints on white dwarfs and the identification of extreme objects
• New Way to Date Globular Clusters: Brown Dwarf Cooling Sequences
• Luminosity limits on white dwarfs in a Galactic shroud