Gaia white dwarfs with infrared excess

I. The 100 pc catalogue

¹ Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, Camino Bajo del Castillo s/n, 28692, Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
² Departament de Física, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/Esteve Terrades 5, 08860 Castelldefels, Spain
³ Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, c/Esteve Terradas 1, Edifici RDIT, Campus PMT-UPC, 08860 Castelldefels, Spain

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 15 October 2025
Accepted: 3 February 2026

Abstract

Context. The presence of infrared (IR) excess flux observed in white dwarfs is related to the existence of debris disks or substellar companions. These systems provide important clues in studies of extrasolar planetary material and binary evolution. However, fully characterising their properties requires a statistically significant, complete sample.

Aims. This work aims to identify a complete sample of white dwarfs with IR excess emission within 100 pc of the Sun.

Methods. We built the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the white dwarfs using synthetic photometry in 56 optical filters of the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astronomical Survey system, generated from Gaia Data Release 3 low-resolution spectra and complemented with the latest IR photometry available at the Virtual Observatory. We used

Virtual Observatory SED Analyzer (VOSA)

Results. We built a catalogue of 456 IR excess white dwarfs, of which 292 were robust identifications, and 164 were candidates; of the total, 351 (∼75%) were new identifications. This implies a fraction of IR excess white dwarfs between 5.9 ± 0.3% and 9.2±0.4%, which is higher than previous works, but in agreement with some more recent estimates. Furthermore, for the sample of IR excess white dwarfs, the fraction of sources with non-hydrogen atmosphere increases with the Gaia G_BP − G_RP colour, in contrast to the general white dwarf population. However, this result should be interpreted with caution. Additionally, a thorough comparison of our catalogue with those of previous studies was performed.

Conclusions. The sample of white dwarfs with IR excess emission within 100 pc presented in this work is the largest, most complete, and most reliable to date. Thanks to their proximity, they are ideal targets for follow-up studies aimed at characterising circumstellar disks and substellar companions, as well as the composition of accreted planetary material.