Merging White Dwarfs and Thermonuclear Supernovae

Abstract

Thermonuclear supernovae result when interaction with a companion reignites nuclear fusion in a carbon-oxygen white dwarf, causing a thermonuclear runaway, a catastrophic gain in pressure, and the disintegration of the whole white dwarf. It is usually thought that fusion is reignited in near-pycnonuclear conditions when the white dwarf approaches the Chandrasekhar mass. I briefly describe two long-standing problems faced by this scenario, and our suggestion that these supernovae instead result from mergers of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, including those that produce sub-Chandrasekhar mass remnants. I then turn to possible observational tests, in particular those that test the absence or presence of electron captures during the burning.

8 pages, 1 figures, accepted for publication in Phil. Tr. A, proc. of New windows on transients across the Universe, ed. P. O'Brien et al.; v2 includes changes following comments by the 2 referees

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Chandrasekhar Mass Progenitor for the Type Ia Supernova Remnant 3C 397 from The Enhanced Abundances of Nickel and Manganese
• The Post-Merger Magnetized Evolution of White Dwarf Binaries: The Double-Degenerate Channel of Sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae and the Formation of Magnetized White Dwarfs
• Existence of Chandrasekhar's limit in GUP white dwarfs
• Prospect of Chandrasekhar's limit against modified dispersion relation
• Noncommutative dispersion relation and mass-radius relation of white dwarfs