Infrared-excess white dwarfs in the Gaia 100 pc sample

TL;DR

This study analyzes a volume-limited sample of Gaia white dwarfs to identify infrared excesses, revealing a small but significant fraction with circumstellar disks or brown dwarf companions, consistent with previous findings.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic method using VOSA to identify infrared excess candidates in a large, representative white dwarf sample, including many new detections.

Findings

Infrared excess due to circumstellar disks in 1.6% of white dwarfs

Approximately 0.1-0.2% have brown dwarf companions

Detection rate aligns with previous studies for different temperature ranges

Abstract

We analyse the 100pc Gaia white dwarf volume-limited sample by means of VOSA (Virtual Observatory SED Analyser) with the aim of identifying candidates for displaying infrared excesses. Our search focuses on the study of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of 3,733 white dwarfs with reliable infrared photometry and GBP-GRP colours below 0.8 mag, a sample which seems to be nearly representative of the overall white dwarf population. Our search results in 77 selected candidates, 52 of which are new identifications. For each target we apply a two-component SED fitting implemented in VOSA to derive the effective temperatures of both the white dwarf and the object causing the excess. We calculate a fraction of infrared-excess white dwarfs due to the presence of a circumstellar disk of 1.6+-0.2%, a value which increases to 2.6+-0.3% if we take into account incompleteness issues. Our results are in agreement with the drop in the percentage of infrared excess detections for cool (<8,000K) and hot (>20,000K) white dwarfs obtained in previous analyses. The fraction of white dwarfs with brown dwarf companions we derive is ~0.1-0.2%.