The impact of mergers in the white dwarf mass distribution

Abstract

The study of the white dwarf mass distribution gives a unique opportunity to obtain information about the amount of mass lost during stellar evolution. Spectroscopic observations of a large number of white dwarfs has allowed to derive the observational white dwarf mass distribution with accuracy. This distribution shows a central peak around the value 0.6M(circle dot), but presents also a small peak at larger masses. Our purpose in this work is to evaluate the influence of the mergers of white dwarfs in the mass distribution, since it has been proved that the merging of two white dwarfs leads to a more massive white dwarf, and this mechanism might be one of the responsibles of the excess of massive white dwarfs in the white dwarf mass distribution.