DA white dwarfs in SDSS DR7 and a search for infrared excess emission

TL;DR

This paper introduces a photometric method to identify DA white dwarfs in SDSS data, significantly increasing the known sample size, and investigates the occurrence of infrared excess emission indicating companions or debris discs.

Contribution

The study develops a colour-colour cut technique to select DA white dwarfs without spectroscopy, expanding the sample and enabling infrared excess analysis for companion and debris disc detection.

Findings

95% completeness in DA white dwarf selection with 62% efficiency

Approximately 70% increase in DA white dwarf sample size

Around 2% show infrared excess indicative of companions or debris discs

Abstract

We present a method which uses colour-colour cuts on SDSS photometry to select white dwarfs with hydrogen rich (DA) atmospheres without the recourse to spectroscopy. This method results in a sample of DA white dwarfs that is 95% complete at an efficiency of returning a true DA white dwarf of 62%. The approach was applied to SDSS Data Release 7 for objects with and without SDSS spectroscopy. This lead to 4636 spectroscopically confirmed DA white dwarfs with g<=19; a ~70% increase compared to Eisenstein et al.'s 2006 sample. Including the photometric-only objects, we estimate a factor of 3 increase in DA white dwarfs. We find that the SDSS spectroscopic follow-up is 44% complete for DA white dwarfs with effective temperature >~ 8000K. We further cross-correlated the SDSS sample with Data Release 8 of the UKIDSS Large Area Survey. The spectral energy distributions of both subsets, with and without SDSS spectroscopy, were fitted with white dwarf models to determine the fraction of DA white dwarfs with low-mass stellar companions or dusty debris discs via the detection of excess near-infrared emission. From the spectroscopic sample we find that 2.0% of white dwarfs have an excess consistent with a brown dwarf type companion, with a firm lower limit of 0.8%. From the white dwarfs with photometry only, we find that 1.8% are candidates for having brown dwarf companions. Similarly, both samples show that ~1% of white dwarfs are candidates for having a dusty debris disc.