White Dwarf Cosmochronology in the Solar Neighborhood
  The study of the stellar formation history in the solar neighborhood is a
powerful technique to recover information about the early stages and evolution
of the Milky Way. We present a new method which consists of directly probing
the formation history from the nearby stellar remnants. We rely on the volume
complete sample of white dwarfs within 20 pc, where accurate cooling ages and
masses have been determined. The well characterized initial-final mass relation
is employed in order to recover the initial masses (1 < M/Msun < 8) and total
ages for the local degenerate sample. We correct for moderate biases that are
necessary to transform our results to a global stellar formation rate, which
can be compared to similar studies based on the properties of main-sequence
stars in the solar neighborhood. Our method provides precise formation rates
for all ages except in very recent times, and the results suggest an enhanced
formation rate for the solar neighborhood in the last 5 Gyr compared to the
range 5 < Age (Gyr) < 10. Furthermore, the observed total age of ~10 Gyr for
the oldest white dwarfs in the local sample is consistent with the early
seminal studies that have determined the age of the Galactic disk from stellar
remnants. The main shortcoming of our study is the small size of the local
white dwarf sample. However, the presented technique can be applied to larger
samples in the future.
