A new method to retrieve the star formation history from white dwarf luminosity functions -- an application to the Gaia catalogue of nearby stars

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Lam, Marco C, Rowell, Nicholas
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Lam, Marco C
Rowell, Nicholas
author_facet Lam, Marco C
Rowell, Nicholas
contents With the state-of-the-art Gaia astrometry, the number of confirmed white dwarfs has reached a few hundred thousand. We have reached the era where small features in the white dwarf luminosity function (WDLF) of the solar neighbourhood can be resolved. We demonstrate how to apply Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling on a set of pre-computed partial-WDLFs to derive the star formation history of their progenitor stellar populations. We compare the results against many well-accepted and established works using various types of stars, including white dwarfs, main sequence stars, sub-giants and the entire stellar population. We find convincing agreements among most of the methods, particularly at the intermediate age of 0.1-9 Gyr.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_14394
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A new method to retrieve the star formation history from white dwarf luminosity functions -- an application to the Gaia catalogue of nearby stars
Lam, Marco C
Rowell, Nicholas
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
With the state-of-the-art Gaia astrometry, the number of confirmed white dwarfs has reached a few hundred thousand. We have reached the era where small features in the white dwarf luminosity function (WDLF) of the solar neighbourhood can be resolved. We demonstrate how to apply Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling on a set of pre-computed partial-WDLFs to derive the star formation history of their progenitor stellar populations. We compare the results against many well-accepted and established works using various types of stars, including white dwarfs, main sequence stars, sub-giants and the entire stellar population. We find convincing agreements among most of the methods, particularly at the intermediate age of 0.1-9 Gyr.
title A new method to retrieve the star formation history from white dwarf luminosity functions -- an application to the Gaia catalogue of nearby stars
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14394