Discovery of more than two thousand white dwarfs in the globular cluster Omega Centauri.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 5 0 1 6 3 3 v 1 2 8 J a n 2 0 0 5 Draft version February 2, 2008 Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 6/22/04 DISCOVERY OF MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND WHITE DWARFS IN THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER ω CENTAURI1 M. Monelli 2, C.E. Corsi 2, V. Castellani 2,3, I. Ferraro 2, G. Iannicola 2, P.G. Prada Moroni 4,5,6, G. Bono 2, R. Buonanno 7, A. Calamida 2,7, L.M. Freyhammer 8,9, L. Pulone 2, and P.B. Stetson 10 (Dated: drafted February 2, 2008 / Received / Accepted) Draft version February 2, 2008 ABSTRACT We present deep multiband (F435W, F625W, and F658N) photometric data of the Globular Cluster ω Cen collected with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board of the Hubble Space Telescope. We identified in the (F435W-F625W, F435W) plane more than two thousand White Dwarf (WD) candidates using three out of nine available pointings. Such a large sample appears in agreement with predictions based on the ratio between WD and Horizontal Branch (HB) evolutionary lifetimes. We also detected ≈ 1600 WDs in the (F658N-F625W, F625W) plane, supporting the evidence that a large fraction of current cluster WDs are Hα bright. Subject headings: globular clusters: general — globular clusters: omega Centauri 1. INTRODUCTION Among Galactic Globular Clusters (GGCs), ω Cen is the most massive one (M = 5 × 106 M⊙, Meylan et al. 1995) and the only one which clearly shows a well- defined spread in metallicity. According to recent es- timates based on sizable samples of evolved Red Giant Branch (RGB) and sub-giant branch stars, the metallic- ity distribution shows three peaks around [Fe/H] = ?1.7, ?1.5 and ?1.2 together with a tail of metal-rich stars ap- proaching [Fe/H] ≈ ?0.5 (Norris et al. 1996; Hilker et al. 2004). During the last few years it has also been sug- gested that ω Cen harbors multiple stellar populations (Lee et al. 1999) characterized by different ages (Ferraro et al. 2004; Hughes et al. 2004), He abundances, and dis- tances (Bedin et al. 2004; No