Gravitational redshift bias in white dwarf spectra
In August 2025, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Stefan Arseneau (Arseneau, Hermes, Zakamska et al. 2025) was accepted which showed that substantial biases (5-15 km/s) exist in low-resolution radial velocity measurements, indicating that all the physics of line formation in high-density plasmas is not fully accounted for in state-of-the-art white dwarf model atmospheres. Using large samples from SDSS-V, we attempt to measure this bias and provide simple corrections for surveys like SDSS, DESI, and 4MOST. The manuscript has been accepted in The Astrophysical Journal.