The stellar content of the Galaxy: the white dwarf population

Abstract

On the basis of theoretical evolutionary expectations, we develop a Galactic model reproducing star counts and synthetic color-magnitude diagrams of field stars, which include the white dwarf (WD) population. In this way we are able to evaluate the expected occurrence of WDs in deep observations at the various photometric bands and Galactic coordinates, discussing the contribution of the WDs of the various Galactic components. The effects on the theoretical predictions of different WD evolutionary models, ages, initial mass functions and relations between progenitor mass and WD mass are discussed.