Helium stars as supernova progenitors

Abstract

We follow the evolution of helium stars of initial mass $(2.2-2.5)M_{\odot }$, and show that they undergo off-center carbon burning, which leaves behind $\sim 0.01M_{\odot }$ of unburnt carbon in the inner part of the core. When the carbon-oxygen core grows to Chandrasekhar mass, the amount of left-over carbon is sufficient to ignite thermonuclear runaway. At the moment of explosion, the star will possess an envelope of several $0.1M_{\odot }$, consisting of He, C, and possibly some H, perhaps producing a kind of peculiar SN. Based on the results of Waldman and Barkat (2007) for accreting white dwarfs, we expect to get thermonuclear runaway at a broad range of ${\rho }_c\approx (1-6)\times 10^9\mathrm{gc}{\mathrm{m}}^{-3}$, depending on the amount of residual carbon. We verified the feasibility of this scenario by showing that in a close binary system with initial masses $(8.5+7.7)M_{\odot }$ and initial period of 150 day the primary produces a helium remnant of $2.3M_{\odot }$ that evolves further like the model we considered.

4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Hydrogen-Deficient Stars 2007