Magnetic white dwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

To obtain better statistics on the occurrence of magnetism among white dwarfs, we searched the spectra of the hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf stars (DAs) in the Data Release 7 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) for Zeeman splittings and estimated the magnetic fields. We found 521 DAs with detectable Zeeman splittings, with fields in the range from around 1 to 733 MG, which amounts to 4 per cent of all DAs observed. As the SDSS spectra have low signal-to-noise ratios, we carefully investigated by simulations with theoretical spectra how reliable our detection of magnetic field was. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.