History of the Milky Way star formation rate from the white dwarf luminosity function

Abstract

Consideration is given to the use of the white dwarf luminosity function (WDLF) to study the history of the star formation rate in the Galaxy. It is shown that the WDLF is much more sensitive to the star formation rate than to variations in the initial mass function. A marginal feature in the WDLF at log(L/solar L) = -2 is found to represent the burst of star formation which occurred 300 million yrs ago, as proposed by Barry (1988) and Scalo (1987, 1988). Observations are used to limit the ratio of recent to past average star formation rates for smoothly decreasing and increasing star formation rates. The star formation rate histories derived from the results of Twarog (1980) and Barry (1988) are compared.