The White Dwarf Population in the 2QZ and Sloan Surveys

We present an analysis of the Anglo-Australian Telescope 2dF QSO Redshift Survey (2QZ) of high-Galactic latitude white dwarf stars. Approximately 2400 white dwarfs have been identified with distances above the Galactic plane ranging from 200 pc to 1 kpc. The same stellar population has been re-discovered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and we determine their temperature, mass, and absolute luminosity distributions with an analysis of the Sloan photometric and 2QZ spectroscopic data sets. Our main objectives are to measure the scale-height and luminosity function of the population, determine its formation history and examine evidence for spectral evolutionary effects.