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Paper: Estimating White Dwarf Luminosity Functions
Volume: 334, 14th European Workshop on White Dwarfs
Page: 37
Authors: Garcia-Berro, E.; Geijo, E.M.; Torres, S.; Isern, J.
Abstract: The white dwarf luminosity function is an important tool in the study of the solar neighborhood, since it allows the determination of the age of the galactic disk. Over the years, several methods have been proposed to calculate luminosity functions, from the most simple ones — counting sample objects inside a given volume — to very sophisticated ones — like the C method, the STY method or the Choloniewski method, among others. However, the 1=Vmax method is usually employed in computing the white dwarf luminosity function and little attention has been given to other methods — in sharp contrast with the situation when galaxy luminosity functions are derived from a variety of samples. We present a comparison between different estimators for computing the white dwarf luminosity function.
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