White dwarf mass distribution in the SDSS

By S. O. Kepler, S. Kleinman, A. Nitta, D. Koester, B. Castanheira, O. Giovannini, A. D. Costa, L. Althaus. 2006

289 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We determined masses for the 7167 DA and 507 DB white dwarf stars classified as single and non-magnetic in Data Release 4 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We obtained revised T eff and log g determinations for the most massive stars by fitting the SDSS optical spectra with a synthetic spectra grid derived from model atmospheres extending to log g = 10.0. We also calculate radii from evolutionary models and create volume-corrected mass distributions for our DA and DB samples. The mean mass for the DA stars brighter than g = 19 and hotter than T eff = 12 000 K is (M) DA ≃0.593 ± 0.016.M ⊙ . For the 150 DBs brighter than g = 19 and hotter than T eff = 16000 K, we find (M) DB = 0.711 ± 0.009 M ⊙ . It appears the mean mass for DB white dwarf stars may be significantly larger than that for DAs. We also report the highest mass white dwarf stars ever found, up to 1.33 M ⊙ .

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2fa315a674194d687f471b9495ebd6ad6860f9a4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Binary star origin of high field magnetic white dwarfs (2008, background): “1 and compared with normal DA WDs in the SDSS sample (Kepler et al. 2007).”
SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF DA WHITE DWARFS: STARK BROADENING OF HYDROGEN LINES INCLUDING NONIDEAL EFFECTS (2009, methodology): “For instance, BSL92 used the spectroscopic method to determine the shape of the DA mass distribution (see also Liebert et al. 2005; Kepler et al. 2007), while Bergeron et al. (1995b) applied the same method to define the location of the ZZ Ceti instability strip in a log g–Teff diagram (see also…”
TIDAL DISRUPTION AND IGNITION OF WHITE DWARFS BY MODERATELY MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2008, background): “The observed white dwarf mass distribution is strongly peaked around 0.6 M⊙ (Kepler et al. 2007).”
New white dwarf and subdwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12 (2015, methodology): “3 shows the mass distribution after correcting by the observed volume, following Schmidt (1968, 1975), Green (1980), Stobie, Ishida, & Peacock (1989), Liebert, Bergeron, & Holberg (2003), Kepler et al. (2007), Limoges & Bergeron (2010) and Rebassa-Mansergas et al. (2015).”
SDSS DR7 WHITE DWARF CATALOG (2012, background): “The masses of DAs and DBs are therefore statistically different, as also found by Kepler et al. (2007), Tremblay et al. (2010), and Bergeron et al. (2011).”
The initial–final mass relationship of white dwarfs revisited: effect on the luminosity function and mass distribution (2008, methodology): “…to the low-mass end is important since we are now studying the most populated region of initial masses according to the initial mass function of Salpeter, and this means that we are also reproducing the well-established peak of the field white dwarf mass distribution (Kepler et al. 2007).”
KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: A DETAILED MODEL ATMOSPHERE ANALYSIS OF NEARBY WHITE DWARFS (2012, result): “This result is in sharp contrast with the results obtained by Kepler et al. (2007) in their spectroscopic analyses of DA and DB stars identified in the Data Release 4 of the SDSS.”
Super and massive AGB stars - IV. Final fates - Initial to final mass relation (2014, background): “A substantial numbers of massive and ultra-massive WDs8 have been discovered in white dwarf surveys; with estimates that about 20 per cent of all WDs are massive WDs (Liebert et al. 2005; Kepler et al. 2007) and about 10 per cent ultra-massive WDs (Vennes & Kawka 2008).”
Evolutionary and pulsational properties of white dwarf stars (2010, background): “With the advent of large surveys, like the SDSS, the number of spectroscopicallyidentified H-deficient stars has increased considerably — see Hügelmeyer et al. (2006) and Kepler et al. (2007) for DO and DB white dwarfs, respectively.”
Post common envelope binaries from SDSS - XI. The white dwarf mass distributions of CVs and pre-CVs (2011, background): “Ritter 1976; Warner 1976; Robinson 1976; Ritter 1987), i.e. significantly exceeding the average mass of single WDs of 〈Mwd〉 ≃ 0.6M⊙ (e.g. Koester et al. 1979; Bergeron et al. 1992; Kepler et al. 2007).”
A COMPREHENSIVE SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF DB WHITE DWARFS (2011, result): “Worth mentioning in this context are the results shown in Figure 5 of Kepler et al. (2007) for the DB stars identified in the Data Release 4 of the SDSS, where the masses gradually increase to very large values (M > 1.0 M⊙) at low effective temperatures.”
Magnetic white dwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2012, unknown): “…gravity, increases apparently below 13 000K for DAs (Bergeron, Saffer, & Liebert 1991; Koester 1991; Kleinman et al. 2004; Liebert, Bergeron, & Holberg 2005; Kepler et al. 2007; Limoges & Bergeron 2010; Gianninas et al. 2010; Tremblay, Bergeron, & Gianninas 2011; Gianninas, Bergeron, & Ruiz 2011).”
Remnant evolution after a carbon–oxygen white dwarf merger (2007, methodology): “For the white dwarf masses we choose 0.6 M , in the peak of the white dwarf mass distribution (e.g. Kepler et al. 2007), and 0.9 M , so that the total binary mass is above the Chandrasekhar limit.”
Pulsating White Dwarf Stars and Precision Asteroseismology (2008, background): “Second, they are a homogeneous class of objects with a very narrow distribution of total stellar masses centered between 0.15 / 1.36wdM M≤ ≤⊙ and a mean mass of DA 0.593 0.016M M〈 〉 ± ⊙≃ for the 84% of all white dwarf stars that are DAs (Kepler et al. 2007).”
Spectroscopic analysis of DA white dwarfs with 3D model atmospheres (2013, methodology): “We are also aware that our 3D grid does not extend to high and low enough gravities to cover some of the most extreme and interesting white dwarf observations (see, e.g., Kepler et al. 2007; Hermes et al. 2013).”
AN IMPROVED SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF DA WHITE DWARFS FROM THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 4 (2011, methodology): “15, 000 K (7 out of 10 DB components in Table 3) have a tendency to have spectroscopic log g values larger than average (see, e.g., Beauchamp et al. 1996; Kepler et al. 2007).”