A population synthesis study of the luminosity function of hot white dwarfs

We present a coherent and detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the population of hot white dwarfs. We assess the statistical significance of the hot end of the white dwarf luminosity function and the role played by the bolometric corrections of hydrogen-rich white dwarfs at high effective temperatures. We use the most up-to-date stellar evolutionary models and implement a full description of the observational selection biases to obtain realistic simulations of the observed white dwarf population. Our theoretical results are compared with the luminosity function of hot white dwarfs obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), for both DA and non-DA white dwarfs. We find that the theoretical results are in excellent agreement with the observational data for the population of white dwarfs with hydrogen deficient atmospheres (non-DA white dwarfs). For the population of white dwarfs with hydrogen-rich atmospheres (white dwarfs of the DA class), our simulations show some discrepancies with the observations for the brightest luminosity bins. These discrepancies can be attributed to the way in which the masses of the white dwarfs contributing to this luminosity bin have been computed, as most of them have masses smaller than the theoretical lower limit for carbon-oxygen white dwarfs. We conclude that the way in which the observational luminosity function of hot white dwarfs is obtained is very sensitive to the particular implementation of the method used to derive the masses of the sample. We also provide a revised luminosity function for hot white dwarfs with hydrogen-rich atmospheres.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Estudio del flujo turbulento cargado con partículas sólidas a través de un canal

En el presente trabajo se estudia el flujo turbulento cargado con partículas sólidas a través de un canal. Para ello se utiliza un programa comercial de dinámica de fluidos tomputacional, cuyo esquema de discretización es el de volúmenes Guitas. La fase fluida (aue) se estudia mediante un enfoque Euleriano y la fase dispersa (partículas sólidas) mediante un enfoque Lagrangiano, respecto al acoplamiento hidrodinámico entre las fases, solo se considera la acción de la fase fluida sobre la fase dispersa (one-way coupling) para una concentración másica determinada. Se desarrolla un estudio de convergencia de malla y los resultados numéricos se comparan con datos experimentales

Revisiting the luminosity function of single halo white dwarfs

White dwarfs are the fossils left by the evolution of low-and intermediate-mass stars, and have very long evolutionary timescales. This allows us to use them to explore the properties of old populations, like the Galactic halo. We present a population synthesis study of the luminosity function of halo white dwarfs, aimed at investigating which information can be derived from the currently available observed data. We employ an up-to-date population synthesis code based on Monte Carlo techniques, that incorporates the most recent and reliable cooling sequences for metal poor progenitors as well as an accurate modeling of the observational biases. We find that because the observed sample of halo white dwarfs is restricted to the brightest stars only the hot branch of the white dwarf luminosity function can be used for such purposes, and that its shape function is almost insensitive to the most relevant inputs, like the adopted cooling sequences, the initial mass function, the density profile of the stellar spheroid, or the adopted fraction of unresolved binaries. Moreover, since the cut-off of the observed luminosity has not been yet determined only lower limits to the age of the halo population can be placed. We conclude that the current observed sample of the halo white dwarf population is still too small to obtain definite conclusions about the properties of the stellar halo, and the recently computed white dwarf cooling sequences which incorporate residual hydrogen burning should be assessed using metal-poor globular clusters.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&

White dwarfs with hydrogen-deficient atmospheres and the dark matter content of the Galaxy

The nature of the several microlensing events observed by the MACHO team towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is still a subject of debate. Low-mass substellar objects and stars with masses larger than ~M_{sun} have been ruled out as major components of a Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object (MACHO) Galactic halo, while stars of half a solar mass seem to be viable candidates. Main sequence stars have been already discarded, and there are tight restrictions on the role played by white dwarfs with hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. In this paper we evaluate the contribution to the dark matter content of the Galaxy of white dwarfs with hydrogen-deficient atmospheres. For this purpose we use a Monte Carlo simulator which incorporates up-to-date evolutionary sequences of white dwarfs with hydrogen-rich and hydrogen-deficient atmospheres. We also take into account detailed descriptions of the thick disk and the halo of our Galaxy as well as of a reliable model of the LMC. We find that the contribution of white dwarfs with hydrogen-deficient atmospheres moderately increases the theoretical estimate of the optical depth with respect to the value obtained when only hydrogen-rich white dwarfs are considered. We also find that the contribuiton of the thick disk population of white dwarfs is comparable to the halo contribution. However, the contributions of both the halo and the thick disk white-dwarf populations are still insufficient to explain the number of events observed by the MACHO team. Finally, we find that the contribution to the halo dark matter of the entire population under study is less than 10% at the 95% conficence level.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Numerical precision radiative corrections to the Dalitz plot of baryon semileptonic decays including the spin-momentum correlation of the decaying and emitted baryons

We calculate the radiative corrections to the angular correlation between the polarization of the decaying and the direction of the emitted spin one-half baryons in the semileptonic decay mode. The final results are presented, first, with the triple integration of the bremsstrahlung photon ready to be performed numerically and, second, in an analytical form. A third presentation of our results in the form of numerical arrays of coefficients to be multiplied by the quadratic products of form factors is discussed. This latter may be the most practical one to use in Monte Carlo simulations. A series of crosschecks is performed. Previous results to order (alpha/pi)(q/M_1) for the decays of unpolarized baryons are reviewed, too, where q is the momentum transfer and M_1 is the mass of the decaying baryon. This paper is self-contained and organized to make it accessible and reliable in the analysis of the Dalitz plot of precision experiments involving heavy quarks and is not compromised to fixing the form factors at predetermined values. It is assumed that the real photons are kinematically discriminated. Otherwise, our results have a general model-independent applicability.Comment: 34 pages, 4 tables, no figures. Some sections have been shortened. Conclusions remain unchange

Probing the electron-phonon coupling in ozone-doped graphene by Raman spectroscopy

We have investigated the effects of ozone treatment on graphene by Raman scattering. Sequential ozone short-exposure cycles resulted in increasing the $p$ doping levels as inferred from the blue shift of the 2$D$ and $G$ peak frequencies, without introducing significant disorder. The two-phonon 2$D$ and 2$D'$ Raman peak intensities show a significant decrease, while, on the contrary, the one-phonon G Raman peak intensity remains constant for the whole exposure process. The former reflects the dynamics of the photoexcited electrons (holes) and, specifically, the increase of the electron-electron scattering rate with doping. From the ratio of 2$D$ to 2$D$ intensities, which remains constant with doping, we could extract the ratio of electron-phonon coupling parameters. This ratio is found independent on the number of layers up to ten layers. Moreover, the rate of decrease of 2$D$ and 2$D'$ intensities with doping was found to slowdown inversely proportional to the number of graphene layers, revealing the increase of the electron-electron collision probability

Monte Carlo simulations of post-common-envelope white dwarf + main sequence binaries: The effects of including recombination energy

Detached WD+MS PCEBs are perhaps the most suitable objects for testing predictions of close-compact binary-star evolution theories, in particular, CE evolution. The population of WD+MS PCEBs has been simulated by several authors in the past and compared with observations. However, most of those predictions did not take the possible contributions to the envelope ejection from additional sources of energy (mostly recombination energy) into account. Here we update existing binary population models of WD+MS PCEBs by assuming that a fraction of the recombination energy available within the envelope contributes to ejecting the envelope. We performed Monte Carlo simulations of 10^7 MS+MS binaries for 9 different models using standard assumptions for the initial primary mass function, binary separations, and initial-mass-ratio distribution and evolved these systems using the publicly available BSE code. Including a fraction of recombination energy leads to a clear prediction of a large number of long orbital period (>~10 days) systems mostly containing high-mass WDs. The fraction of systems with He-core WD primaries increases with the CE efficiency and the existence of very low-mass He WDs is only predicted for high values of the CE efficiency (>~0.5). All models predict on average longer orbital periods for PCEBs containing C/O-core WDs than for PCEBs containing He WDs. This effect increases with increasing values of both efficiencies. Longer periods after the CE phase are also predicted for systems containing more massive secondary stars. The initial-mass-ratio distribution affects the distribution of orbital periods, especially the distribution of secondary star masses. Our simulations, in combination with a large and homogeneous observational sample, can provide constraints on the values of the CE efficiencies, as well as on the initial-mass-ratio distribution for MS+MS binary stars.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&