Gaia DR2 white dwarf candidates

We used a sample of spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to map the entire space spanned by these objects in the Gaia Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. We then defined a set of cuts in absolute magnitude, colour, and a number of Gaia quality flags to remove the majority of contaminating objects.

Finally, we adopt a method analogous to the one presented in our earlier SDSS photometric catalogues to calculate a probability of being a white dwarf (PWD) for all Gaia sources which passed the initial selection. The final catalogue is composed of 486641 stars with calculated PWD from which it is possible to select a sample of~260000 high-confidence white dwarf candidates in the magnitude range 8<G<21. By comparing this catalogue with a sample of SDSS white dwarf candidates we estimate an upper limit in completeness of 85 per cent for white dwarfs with G<=20mag and Teff>7000K, at high Galactic latitudes (|b|>20deg).