The violent white dwarf merger scenario for the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae

Journal article

Recent observations suggest that some Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) originate from the merging of two carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO WDs). Meanwhile, recent hydrodynamical simulations have indicated that the accretion-induced collapse may be avoided under certain conditions when double WDs merge violently. However, the properties of SNe Ia from this violent merger scenario are highly dependent on a particular mass-accretion stage, the so-called WD + He subgiant channel, during which the primary WD is able to increase its mass by accreting He-rich material from an He subgiant before the systems evolves into a doubleWD system. In this paper, we aim to study this particular evolutionary stage systematically and give the properties of violentWDmergers. By employing the Eggleton stellar evolution code, we followed a large number of binary calculations and obtained the regions in parameter space for producing violent mergers based on the WD + He subgiant channel. According to these simulations, we found that the primary WDs can increase their mass by ∼0.10-0.45M⊙ during the massaccretion stage. We then conducted a series of binary population synthesis calculations and found that the Galactic SN Ia birthrate from this channel is about 0.01-0.4 × 10-3 yr-1. This suggests that the violent WD mergers from this channel may only contribute to ∼0.3-10 per cent of all SNe Ia in our Galaxy. The delay times of violent WD mergers from this channel are ≥1.7Gyr, contributing to the SNe Ia in old populations. We also found that the WD + He subgiant channel is the dominant way for producing violent WD mergers that may be able to eventually explode as SNe Ia.

Authors: Liu, D; Wang, B; Podsiadlowski, P; Han, Z

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Volume: 461
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 3653-3662
• Publication date: 2016-10-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-06-29
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw1575
• EISSN: 1365-2966
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Keywords: stars: evolution; white dwarfs; supernovae: general; binaries: close