Massive white dwarfs in young star clusters

DOI

We have carried out a search for massive white dwarfs (WDs) in the direction of young open star clusters using the Gaia DR2 database. The aim of this survey was (1) to provide robust data for new and previously known high-mass WDs regarding cluster membership, (2) to highlight WDs previously included in the initial final mass relation (IFMR) that are unlikely members of their respective clusters according to Gaia astrometry, and (3) to select an unequivocal WD sample that could then be compared with the host clusters' turnoff masses. All promising WD candidates in each cluster color-magnitude diagram were followed up with spectroscopy from Gemini in order to determine whether they were indeed WDs and derive their masses, temperatures, and ages. In order to be considered cluster members, white dwarfs were required to (1) have proper motions and parallaxes within 2{sigma}, 3{sigma}, or 4{sigma} of those of their potential parent cluster based on how contaminated the field was in their region of the sky, (2) have a cooling age that was less than the cluster age, and (3) have a mass that was broadly consistent with the IFMR. A number of WDs included in current versions of the IFMR turned out to be nonmembers, and a number of apparent members, based on Gaia's astrometric data alone, were rejected, as their mass and/or cooling times were incompatible with cluster membership. In this way, we developed a highly selected IFMR sample for high-mass WDs that, surprisingly, contained no precursor masses significantly in excess of ~6M_{sun}_.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/912/165/table1 (Potential cluster member white dwarfs identified)

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/912/165/table4 (Wide search WD cluster member candidates)

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/912/165/table5 (Clusters studied (see Section 3))

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.19120165
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/912/165
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/912/165
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/912/165
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/912/165
Provenance
Creator Richer H.B.; Caiazzo I.; Du H.; Grondin S.; Hegarty J.; Heyl J.; Kerr R.,Miller D.R.; Thiele S.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2022
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy