Comparison of Atmospheric Parameters Determined from Spectroscopy and Photometry for DA White Dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

TL;DR

This study compares atmospheric parameters of DA white dwarfs derived from spectroscopy and photometry in SDSS, revealing calibration issues and systematic differences, and proposes methods to improve parameter estimation accuracy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of photometric and spectroscopic techniques for determining white dwarf parameters, highlighting calibration challenges and correction methods.

Findings

Photometric data are well calibrated with zeropoint corrections.

Spectroscopic analysis benefits from 3D hydrodynamical corrections.

Systematic temperature offsets exist between photometric and spectroscopic methods.

Abstract

We present a comparative analysis of atmospheric parameters obtained with the so-called photometric and spectroscopic techniques. Photometric and spectroscopic data for 1360 DA white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are used, as well as spectroscopic data from the Villanova White Dwarf Catalog. We first test the calibration of the ugriz photometric system by using model atmosphere fits to observed data. Our photometric analysis indicates that the ugriz photometry appears well calibrated when the SDSS to AB_95 zeropoint corrections are applied. The spectroscopic analysis of the same data set reveals that the so-called high-log g problem can be solved by applying published correction functions that take into account 3D hydrodynamical effects. However, a comparison between the SDSS and the White Dwarf Catalog spectra also suggests that the SDSS spectra still suffer from a small calibration problem. We then compare the atmospheric parameters obtained from both fitting techniques and show that the photometric temperatures are systematically lower than those obtained from spectroscopic data. This systematic offset may be linked to the hydrogen line profiles used in the model atmospheres. We finally present the results of an analysis aimed at measuring surface gravities using photometric data only.