A SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF BRIGHT, HYDROGEN-RICH WHITE DWARFS

By A. Gianninas, Pierre Bergeron, M. Ruiz. 2011

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We have conducted a spectroscopic survey of over 1300 bright (V ⩽ 17.5), hydrogen-rich white dwarfs based largely on the last published version of the McCook & Sion catalog. The complete results from our survey, including the spectroscopic analysis of over 1100 DA white dwarfs, are presented. High signal-to-noise ratio optical spectra were obtained for each star and were subsequently analyzed using our standard spectroscopic technique where the observed Balmer line profiles are compared to synthetic spectra computed from the latest generation of model atmospheres appropriate for these stars. First, we present the spectroscopic content of our sample, which includes many misclassifications as well as several DAB, DAZ, and magnetic white dwarfs. Next, we look at how the new Stark broadening profiles affect the determination of the atmospheric parameters. When necessary, specific models and analysis techniques are used to derive the most accurate atmospheric parameters possible. In particular, we employ M dwarf templates to obtain better estimates of the atmospheric parameters for those white dwarfs that are in DA+dM binary systems. Certain unique white dwarfs and double-degenerate binary systems are also analyzed in greater detail. We then examine the global properties of our sample including the mass distribution and their distribution as a function of temperature. We then proceed to test the accuracy and robustness of our method by comparing our results to those of other surveys such as SPY and Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Finally, we revisit the ZZ Ceti instability strip and examine how the determination of its empirical boundaries is affected by the latest line profile calculations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cbf3d4070e71aa94c201e83ab4494f2a630420cd

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Citations in the corpus

Magnetic White Dwarfs (2015, unknown): “…et al. (1977); (16)Koester et al. (2009); (17)Koester et al. (2001); (18) Hollands et al. (2015); (19) Achilleos et al. (1991); (20) Schmidt et al. (2001a); (21)Gianninas et al. (2011); (22) Achilleos and Wickramasinghe (1989); (23) Schmidt and Norsworthy (1991); (24) Friedrich et al. (1997);…”
The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “Seventy one of the 90 objects (including five of the ancillary targets) have been analyzed from optical spectra by Gianninas et al. (2011) (hereafter G11), and 60 objects haveat least two spectra in the SPY database.”
AN IMPROVED SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF DA WHITE DWARFS FROM THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 4 (2011, methodology): “It is shown later in this work (Section 4.2) that the spectroscopic temperatures obtained using SDSS spectra are on average 2% higher (for Teff > 13, 000 K) than those obtained using data from Gianninas et al. (2011) for objects in common.”
AGaiaData Release 2 catalogue of white dwarfs and a comparison with SDSS (2018, methodology): “We additionally use the bright, single and non-magnetic DA stars from Gianninas et al. (2011) that we have cross-matched with both our Gaia DR2 catalogue and Pan-STARRS.”
Spectroscopic analysis of DA white dwarfs with 3D model atmospheres (2013, methodology): “…of DA stars, the effective temperature and surface gravity (Teff and log g), are most precisely determined from spectroscopic analyses through a comparison of observed and predicted Balmer line profiles (Bergeron et al. 1992; Koester et al. 2009b; Gianninas et al. 2011; Kleinman et al. 2013).”
KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: A DETAILED MODEL ATMOSPHERE ANALYSIS OF NEARBY WHITE DWARFS (2012, methodology): “Note that our space density is comparable to the value obtained by Harris et al. (2006) based of the SDSS, 4.6 × 10−3 pc−3, but significantly larger than the value derived by Leggett et al. (1998), 3.39 × 10−3 pc−3, based on a model atmosphere analysis of 43 white dwarfs identified in the proper mot”
White Dwarf Rotation as a Function of Mass and a Dichotomy of Mode Line Widths: Kepler Observations of 27 Pulsating DA White Dwarfs through K2 Campaign 8 (2017, methodology): “We show the WMPs of all 27 DAVs observed by Kepler and K2 so far in Figure 6, in addition to the WMP and temperatures of previously known DAVs with atmospheric parameters determined in the same way by Gianninas et al. (2011) and Tremblay et al. (2011).”
On the Spectral Evolution of Hot White Dwarf Stars. I. A Detailed Model Atmosphere Analysis of Hot White Dwarfs from SDSS DR12 (2020, methodology): “To overcome this problem, we applied the procedure developed by Gianninas et al. (2011) to remove the contribution of the main-sequence stars from the observed spectra before proceeding with our standard analysis.”
SDSS DR7 WHITE DWARF CATALOG (2012, methodology): “Gianninas et al. (2011) obtained S / N > 50 spectra of 177 white dwarfs in common with our sample and estimated T eff and log g values for those using the Montreal group atmospheres with ML2 /α = 0 .”