Spectroscopic Identification of Cool White Dwarfs in the Solar Neighborhood

Abstract

The New Luyten Two-Tenths catalog contains a large number of high proper motion white dwarf candidates that remain to be spectroscopically confirmed. We present new spectroscopic observations, as well as SDSS archival spectra of 49 white dwarf candidates selected from the revised NLTT catalog of Salim & Gould. Of these, 34 are cool DA white dwarfs with temperatures ranging from approximately 5000 up to 11,690 K, and 11 are DC white dwarfs with temperatures ranging from 4300 K (NLTT 18555) up to 11,000 K. Three of the DA white dwarfs also display abundances of heavy elements (NLTT 3915, NLTT 44986, and NLTT 43806), and one is a cool magnetic white dwarf (NLTT 44447) with an estimated magnetic field strength of 1.3 MG. We also present a new cool DQ white dwarf (NLTT 31347) with an estimated temperature of 6250 K. We supplement our sample with SDSS ugriz photometry for a fraction of the newly identified white dwarfs. A kinematical study of this sample of white dwarfs, characterized by proper motions ranging from 0136 to 0611 yr-1, suggest that they belong to the thin disk population.