Spectroscopic Analysis of DA White Dwarfs: Stark Broadening of Hydrogen Lines Including Nonideal Effects

We present improved calculations for the Stark broadening of hydrogen lines in dense plasmas typical of white dwarf atmospheres. Our new model is based on the unified theory of Stark broadening from Vidal, Cooper, and Smith. For the first time, we account for the nonideal effects in a consistent way directly inside the line profile calculations. The Hummer and Mihalas theory is used to describe the nonideal effects due to perturbations on the absorber from protons and electrons. We use a truncation of the electric microfield distribution in the quasi-static proton broadening to take into account the fact that high electric microfields dissociate the upper state of a transition. This approach represents a significant improvement over previous calculations that relied on the use of an ad hoc parameter to mimic these nonideal effects. We obtain the first model spectra with line profiles that are consistent with the equation of state. We revisit the properties of DA stars in the range 40,000 K >T _eff> 13,000 K by analyzing the optical spectra with our improved models. The updated atmospheric parameters are shown to differ substantially from those published in previous studies, with a mean mass shifted by +0.034 M _sun. We also show that these revised atmospheric parameters yield absolute visual magnitudes that remain in excellent agreement with trigonometric parallax measurements.