Furthermore, well-defined large samples of white dwarfs are an extremely useful starting point for identifying rare white dwarf types like magnetic white dwarfs (Gänsicke, Euchner & Jordan 2002; Schmidt et al. 2003; Külebi et al. 2009; Kepler et al. 2013), pulsating white dwarfs (Castanheira et al. 2004; Greiss et al. 2014), high/low-mass white dwarfs (Vennes & Kawka 2008; Brown et al. 2010; Hermes et al. 2014), white dwarfs with unresolved low-mass companions (Farihi, Becklin & Zuckerman 2005; Girven et al. 2011; Steele et al. 2013), white dwarfs with rare atmospheric composition (Schmidt et al. 1999; Dufour et al. 2010; Gänsicke et al. 2010), close white dwarf binaries (Marsh, Nelemans & Steeghs 2004; Parsons et al. 2011), metal polluted white dwarfs (Sion, Leckenby & Szkody 1990; Zuckerman & Reid 1998; Dufour et al. 2007; Koester, Gänsicke & Farihi 2014) or white dwarfs with dusty or gaseous planetary debris discs (Gänsicke et al. 2006; Farihi, Jura & Zuckerman 2009; Debes et al. 2011; Wilson et al. 2014). Because of their intrinsic low luminosities identifying a large, complete and well-defined sample of white dwarfs still remains a challenge. Much progress has been made in recent years thanks to large area surveys, first and foremost the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000; Harris et al. 2003; Eisenstein et al. 2006; Kleinman et al. 2013). The largest published catalogue of white dwarfs to date (Kleinman et al. 2013) fully exploited the spectroscopic data available at the time of SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7) and contains over 20 000 white dwarfs (of which 7424 with g ≤ 19). However not only is DR7 now outdated, but SDSS spectroscopy is only available for less than 0.01 per cent of all SDSS photometric sources. Furthermore most of SDSS's white dwarfs are only serendipitous spectroscopic targets. The true potential of SDSS's vast multiband photometric coverage still remains to be fully mined for white dwarf research, but this requires a reliable method able to select white dwarfs candidates without recourse to spectroscopy. Proper motion has been traditionally used to distinguish white dwarfs from other stellar populations. In particular many studies that contributed to the census of white dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood specifically targeted high proper motion objects (Holberg et al. 2002; Sayres et al. 2012; Limoges, Lépine & Bergeron 2013). In this paper we present a novel method which makes use of photometric data and proper motions to calculate a probability of being a white dwarf (PWD) for any photometric source within a broad region in colour space. Unlike any previous similar work, our method does not use a specific cut in colour or proper motion to generate a list of white dwarf candidates; instead it provides a catalogue of sources with an associated PWD. These PWD can then be used to create samples of white dwarf candidates best suited for different specific uses. By applying our method to the full photometric footprint of SDSS Data Release 10 (DR10), we created a catalogue which includes ∼23 000 bright (g ≤ 19) high-fidelity white dwarfs candidates (Table 1). Using this catalogue, we assess the spectroscopic completeness of the SDSS white dwarf sample.
Citation: Debes et al. 2011
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