White dwarfs as Advanced Physics laboratories: the axion case
2020-01-10
12:15
Sala Alberto Lobo (ICE building, UAB Campus)
The shape of the luminosity function of white dwarfs (WDLF) is sensitive to the characteristic cooling time and, therefore, it can be used to test the existence of additional sources or sinks of energy such as those predicted by alternative physical theories.
However, because of the degeneracy between the physical properties of white dwarfs and the properties of the Galaxy, the star formation history (SFH) and the IMF, it is almost always possible to explain any anomaly as an artifact introduced by the star formation rate. To circumvent there are at least two possibilities, the analysis of the WDLF in populations with different stories, like disc and halo, and the search of effects not correlated with the SFH. These procedures are illustrated in the case of axions.