Visitors from the Halo: 11 Gyr Old White Dwarfs in the Solar Neighborhood

<p> We report the discovery of three nearby old halo white dwarf (WD) candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including two stars in a common proper motion binary system. These candidates are selected from our 2800deg2 proper motion survey on the Bok and U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station 1.3 m telescopes, and they display proper motions of 0&dblac;.4-0&dblac;.5 yr&macr;1. Follow-up MMT spectroscopy and near-infrared photometry demonstrate that all three objects are hydrogen-dominated atmosphere WDs with <em> T </em> eff &asymp; 3700-4100 K. For average mass WDs, these temperature estimates correspond to cooling ages of 9-10 Gyr, distances of 70-80 pc, and tangential velocities of 140-200 km s&macr;1. Based on the <em> UVW </em> space velocities, we conclude that they most likely belong to the halo. Furthermore, the combined main-sequence and WD cooling ages are 10-11 Gyr. Along with SDSS J1102+4113, they are the oldest field WDs currently known. These three stars represent only a small fraction of the halo WD candidates in our proper motion survey, and they demonstrate that deep imaging surveys like the Pan-STARRS and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should find many old thick disk and halo WDs that can be used to constrain the age of the Galactic thick disk and halo.</p>