A population synthesis fitting of the $Gaia$ resolved white dwarf binary population within 100 pc

Abstract

The $Gaia$ mission has provided an unprecedented wealth of information about the white dwarf population of our Galaxy. In particular, our studies show that the sample up to 100\,pc from the Sun can be considered as practically complete. This fact allows us to estimate a precise fraction of double-degenerate ($1.18\pm 0.10$\%) and white dwarf plus main-sequence stars ($6.31\pm0.23$\%) among all white dwarfs through comoving pairs identification. With the aid of a detailed population synthesis code we are able to reproduce synthetic white dwarf populations with nearly identical fractions as the observed ones, thus obtaining valuable information about the binary fraction, $f_{\rm b}$, initial mass ratio distribution, $n(q)$, and initial separation distribution, $f(a)$, among other parameters. Our best-fit model is achieved within a $1\sigma$ confidence level for $f(a)\propto a^{-1}$, $n(q)\propto q^{n_q}$, with $n_q=-1.13^{+0.12}_{-0.10}$ and $f_{\rm b}=0.32\pm 0.02$. The fraction of white dwarf mergers generated by this model is $9\sim16\%$, depending on the common-envelope treatment. As sub-products of our modelling we find that around $1\sim3\%$ of the white dwarf population are unresolved double-degenerates and that only $\sim1\%$ of all white dwarfs contain a He-core. Finally, only a mild kick during white dwarf formation seems to be necessary for fitting the observed sky separation of double-degenerate systems.