Monte Carlo simulations of the disk white dwarf population

In order to understand the dynamical and chemical evolution of our Galaxy it is of fundamental importance to study the local neighborhood. White dwarf stars are ideal candidates to probe the history of the solar neighborhood, since these “fossil” stars have very long evolutionary time-scales and, at the same time, their evolution is relatively well understood. In fact, the white dwarf luminosity function has been used for this purpose by several authors. However, a long standing problem arises from the relatively poor statistics of the samples, especially at low luminosities. In this paper we assess the statistical reliability of the white dwarf luminosity function by using a Monte Carlo approach.

[1]  Jeremiah P. Ostriker,et al.  Unsolved Problems in Astrophysics , 2018 .

[2]  M. Wood,et al.  White Dwarf Cosmochronometry. I. Monte Carlo Simulations of Proper-Motion- and Magnitude-limited Samples using Schmidt's 1/Vmax Estimator , 1998 .

[3]  M. Ruiz,et al.  The Cool White Dwarf Luminosity Function and the Age of the Galactic Disk , 1998 .

[4]  J. Binney,et al.  Local stellar kinematics from Hipparcos data , 1997, astro-ph/9710077.

[5]  G. Xie,et al.  A Generalization of the V/Vmax Test , 1997 .

[6]  M. Hernanz,et al.  The Cooling of CO White Dwarfs: Influence of the Internal Chemical Distribution , 1997, astro-ph/9704038.

[7]  W. Harris,et al.  FORMATION OF THE MILKY WAY , 1996, astro-ph/9703048.

[8]  J. A. Smith,et al.  A lower limit of 9.5 Gyr on the age of the Galactic disk from the oldest white dwarf stars , 1996, Nature.

[9]  C. Flynn,et al.  Kinematics of the outer stellar halo , 1996, astro-ph/9603106.

[10]  Pierre Bergeron,et al.  PHOTOMETRIC CALIBRATION OF HYDROGEN- AND HELIUM-RICH WHITE DWARF MODELS , 1995 .

[11]  M. Hernanz,et al.  THE INFLUENCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION ON THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OF WHITE DWARFS , 1994 .

[12]  I. Reid,et al.  The faintest stars : from Schmidt plates to luminosity functions , 1993 .

[13]  James Liebert,et al.  A spectroscopic determination of the mass distribution of DA white dwarfs , 1992 .

[14]  M. Wood,et al.  Constraints on the age and evolution of the Galaxy from the white dwarf luminosity function , 1992 .

[15]  F. James.  A Review of Pseudorandom Number Generators , 1990 .

[16]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes , 1990 .

[17]  J. Scalo,et al.  History of the Milky Way star formation rate from the white dwarf luminosity function , 1990 .

[18]  J. B. Laird,et al.  A survey of proper-motion stars. X. The early evolution of the Galaxy's halo , 1990 .

[19]  I. Iben,et al.  A study of the white dwarf luminosity function , 1989 .

[20]  D. Monet,et al.  The Luminosity Function of White Dwarfs , 1988 .

[21]  Matthew D. Lallo,et al.  Kinematical Tests of White Dwarf Formation Channels and Evolution , 1988 .

[22]  S. O. Kepler,et al.  An independent method for determining the age of the universe , 1987 .

[23]  J. Liebert,et al.  The Luminosity Function of DA White Dwarfs , 1986 .

[24]  J. Scalo.  The stellar initial mass function , 1986 .

[25]  R. Green,et al.  The luminosity function of hot white dwarfs , 1980 .

[26]  J. N. Bahcall,et al.  On the simultaneous analysis of several complete samples - The V/Vmax and Ve/Va variables, with applications to quasars , 1980 .

[27]  J. Liebert,et al.  The space motions and luminosity function of white dwarfs. , 1977 .

[28]  J. Felten,et al.  On Schmidt's Vm estimator and other estimators of luminosity functions , 1976 .

[29]  M. S. Roberts.  Galactic astronomy. , 1981, Science.

[30]  Maarten Schmidt,et al.  Space Distribution and Luminosity Functions of Quasi-Stellar Radio Sources , 1968 .