The so-called sdA stars are defined by having H-rich spectra and surface gravities similar to hot subdwarf stars, but effective temperature below the zero-age horizontal branch. Their evolutionary history is an enigma: their surface gravity is too high for main-sequence stars, but too low for single evolution white dwarfs. They are most likely byproducts of binary evolution, including blue-stragglers, extremely-low mass white dwarf stars (ELMs) and their precursors (pre-ELMs). A small number of ELMs with similar properties to sdAs is known. Other possibilities include metal-poor A/F dwarfs, second generation stars, or even stars accreted from dwarf galaxies. In this work, we analyse colours, proper motions, and spacial velocities of a sample of sdAs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to assess their nature and evolutionary origin. We define a probability of belonging to the main sequence and a probability of being a (pre-)ELM based on these properties. We find that 7 per cent of the sdAs are more likely to be (pre-)ELMs than main-sequence stars. However, the spacial velocity distribution suggests that over 35 per cent of them cannot be explained as single metal-poor A/F stars.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/475/2480/table1 (Obtained values of Teff and logg for the 408 analysed SDSS objects in the range 5.5<=logg<7.0 and 7000<=Teff20000K and logg<6.5, which are possible hot subdwarfs not listed in Geier et al. (2017, Cat. J/A+A/600/A50))