IDENTIFICATION OF LUMINOUS WHITE DWARF CANDIDATES IN THE GLOBULAR CLUSTERS M13 AND M22 USING HST ACS PHOTOMETRIC DATA

A search for luminous white dwarfs (WDs) in several nearby Galactic globular clusters (GCs) was carried out using the deep and homogeneous photometric catalog of Galactic GCs taken with the ACS/WFC aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) by Sarajedini et al. and Anderson et al.. It resulted in the identification of luminous WD candidates in the GCs M13 (NGC 6205) and M22 (NGC 6656). The purpose of the present study is to identify luminous WDs in the deep and homogeneous V versus V - I color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of several nearby Galactic GCs taken with the ACS/WFC aboard the HST. Using photometric data for the GCs M13 and M22 that are now in the public domain, the V versus V - I CMDs of the GCs M13 and M22 were constructed. Many spurious detections in the CMDs were removed using the photometric quality parameters qfit(V ) and qfit(I), and a radial restriction was applied to the CMDs to remove the central stars with higher photometric errors due to central crowding. From each resultant V versus V - I CMD of the GCs M13 and M22, a dozen or so luminous WD candidates were identified. They were confirmed as stellar objects in the accompanying ACS/WFC images and their positions in the CMDs were in the bright part of the DA WD cooling curve. Therefore, the luminous WD candidates in the GCs M13 and M22 seem to be true luminous WDs, and spectroscopic observations are needed to confirm their true identity.