2004/01/09 by E. Garcia-Berro, E. Garcı́a–Berro, Santiago Torres +4 · 1 citation
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galactic halo #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitational microlensing #Halo #Large Magellanic Cloud #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Medicine #Physics #Population #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #White dwarf #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20034541
published as Astron.Astrophys. 418 (2004) 53-65 · 17 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics
arxiv created 2004/01/09 · openalex publication_date 2004/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The interpretation of microlensing results towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) still remains controversial. While white dwarfs have been proposed to explain these results and, hence, to contribute significantly to the mass budget of our Galaxy, there are also several constraints on the role played by white dwarfs. In this paper we analyze self-consistently and simultaneously four different results, namely, the local halo white dwarf luminosity function, the microlensing results reported by the MACHO team towards the LMC, the results of Hubble Deep Field (HDF) and the results of the EROS experiment, for several initial mass functions and halo ages. We find that the proposed log-normal initial mass functions do not contribute to solve the problem posed by the observed microlensing events and, moreover, they overproduce white dwarfs when compared to the results of the HDF and of the EROS survey. We also find that the contribution of hydrogen-rich white dwarfs to the dynamical mass of the halo of the Galaxy cannot be more than ~4%.