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An Improved Spectroscopic Analysis of DA White Dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4

We present an improved spectroscopic and photometric analysis of hydrogen-line DA white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 based on model atmospheres that include improved Stark broadening profiles with non-ideal gas effects. We also perform a careful visual inspection of all spectroscopic fits with high signal-to-noise ratios (S/N > 12) and present improved atmospheric parameters (Teff and log g) for each white dwarf. Through a comparison of spectroscopic and photometric temperatures, we report the discovery of 35 DA+DB/DC double degenerate candidates and 2 helium-rich DA stars. We also determine that a cutoff at S/N = 15 optimizes the size and quality of the sample for computing the mean mass of DA white dwarfs, for which we report a value of 0.613 Msun. In the following step, we compare our results to previous analyses of the SDSS DR4 and find a good agreement if we account for the shift produced by the improved Stark profiles. Finally, the properties of DA white dwarfs in the SDSS are weighed against those of the Villanova White Dwarf Catalog sample of Gianninas et al. We find systematically lower masses (by about 3% on average), a difference that we trace back to the data reduction procedure of the SDSS. We conclude that a better understanding of these differences will be important to determine the absolute temperature scale and mean mass of DA white dwarfs.