The velocity distribution of white dwarfs in Gaia EDR3

Abstract

Using a penalised maximum likelihood we estimate, for the first time, the velocity distribution of white dwarfs in the Solar neighbourhood. Our sample consists of 129 675 white dwarfs within 500 pc in Gaia Early Data Release 3 The white dwarf velocity distributions reveal a similar structure to the rest of the Solar neighbourhood stars, reflecting that white dwarfs are subjected to the same dynamical processes. In the velocity distribution for three magnitudebinned subsamples we however find a novel structure at (𝑈, 𝑉) = (7, −19) km s −1 in fainter samples, potentially related to the Coma Berenices stream. We also see a double-peaked feature in 𝑈-𝑊 at 𝑈 ≈ −30 km s −1 and in 𝑉-𝑊 at 𝑉 ≈ −20 km s −1 for fainter samples. We determine the velocity distribution and velocity moments as a function of absolute magnitude for two samples based on the bifurcation identified in Gaia Data Release 2 in the colour-magnitude diagram. The brighter, redder sequence has a larger velocity dispersion than the fainter, bluer sequence across all magnitudes. It is hard to reconcile this kinematic difference with a bifurcation caused purely by atmospheric composition, while it fits neatly with a significant age difference between the two sequences. Our results provide novel insights into the kinematic properties of white dwarfs and demonstrate the power of analytical techniques that work for the large fraction of stars that do not have measured radial velocities in the current era of large-scale astrometric surveys.

The Origin of Ultramassive White Dwarfs: Hints from Gaia EDR3

“…Dehnen & Binney 1998;Dehnen 1998;Skuljan et al 1999;Chereul et al 1999;Nordström et al 2004;Famaey et al 2005Famaey et al , 2008Antoja et al 2008), and the precise astrometry of the Gaia mission (Gaia Collaboration et al 2016), the successor to HIPPARCOS , has further advanced these studies (e.g. Bovy 2017;Kushniruk et al 2017;Gaia Collaboration et al 2018b;Yu & Liu 2018;Rowell & Kilic 2019;Raddi et al 2022;Mikkola et al 2022).…”

“…The most recent Gaia data, Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3; Gaia Collaboration et al 2021), has been used to study the kinematics of white dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood, showing that the kinematic structure of local white dwarfs (e.g Mikkola et al 2022) is similar to that of local main sequence stars (e.g. Gaia Collaboration et al 2018b;Kushniruk et al 2017;Antoja et al 2012).…”