The white dwarf cooling sequence of 47 Tucanae
  47 Tucanae is one of the most interesting and well observed and theoretically
studied globular clusters. This allows us to study the reliability of our
understanding of white dwarf cooling sequences, to confront different methods
to determine its age, and to assess other important characteristics, like its
star formation history. Here we present a population synthesis study of the
cooling sequence of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. In particular, we study
the distribution of effective temperatures, the shape of the color-magnitude
diagram, and the corresponding magnitude and color distributions. We do so
using an up-to-date population synthesis code based on Monte Carlo techniques,
that incorporates the most recent and reliable cooling sequences and an
accurate modeling of the observational biases. We find a good agreement between
our theoretical models and the observed data. Thus, our study, rules out
previous claims that there are still missing physics in the white dwarf cooling
models at moderately high effective temperatures. We also derive the age of the
cluster using the termination of the cooling sequence, obtaining a good
agreement with the age determinations using the main-sequence turn-off.
Finally, we find that the star formation history of the cluster is compatible
with that btained using main sequence stars, which predict the existence of two
distinct populations. We conclude that a correct modeling of the white dwarf
population of globular clusters, used in combination with the number counts of
main sequence stars provides an unique tool to model the properties of globular
clusters.
