Faint Thermonuclear Supernovae from AM Canum Venaticorum Binaries

By L. Bildsten, K. Shen, N. Weinberg, G. Nelemans. 2007

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Helium that accretes onto a carbon/oxygen white dwarf in double white dwarf AM Canum Venaticorum (AM CVn) binaries undergoes unstable thermonuclear flashes when the orbital period is in the 3.5-25 minute range. At the shortest orbital periods (and highest accretion rates, > 10-7 M☉ yr-1), the flashes are weak and likely lead to the helium equivalent of classical nova outbursts. However, as the orbit widens and drops, the mass required for the unstable ignition increases, leading to progressively more violent flashes up to a final flash with helium shell mass ≈0.02-0.1 M☉. The high pressures of these last flashes allow the burning to produce the radioactive elements 48Cr, 52Fe, and 56Ni that power a faint (MV = -15 to -18) and rapidly rising (few days) thermonuclear supernova. Current galactic AM CVn space densities imply one such explosion every 5,000-15,000 years in 1011 M☉ of old stars (≈2%-6% of the Type Ia rate in E/SO galaxies). These ".Ia" supernovae (one-tenth as bright for one-tenth the time as a Type Ia supernovae) are excellent targets for deep (e.g., V = 24) searches with nightly cadences, potentially yielding an all-sky rate of 1000 per year.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a81c072bdc3576e10455f7705667e5adf1fc57a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. D. Kasen
3. E. Berger
4. E. Quataert
5. F. Mannucci
6. A. Filippenko
7. D. Maoz
8. Stan Woosley

Citations in the corpus

• OPACITIES AND SPECTRA OF THE r-PROCESS EJECTA FROM NEUTRON STAR MERGERS (2013, background): “There are likely many classes of stellar explosions that produce low mass ejections of radioactive material (e.g., Bildsten et al. 2007; Moriya et al. 2010), and an increasing number of fast, faint transients have been observed at optical wavelengths (e.g., Kasliwal et al. 2010; Perets et al. 2010;…”
• Three Hypervelocity White Dwarfs in Gaia DR2: Evidence for Dynamically Driven Double-degenerate Double-detonation Type Ia Supernovae (2018, background): “…2014), has been proposed for helium single degenerates (Nomoto 1982b; Woosley et al. 1986) and for double degenerates that undergo either stable (Bildsten et al. 2007; Fink et al. 2007, 2010; Shen & Bildsten 2009) or unstable mass transfer (Guillochon et al. 2010; Dan et al. 2011; Raskin et al.…”
• CALCIUM-RICH GAP TRANSIENTS IN THE REMOTE OUTSKIRTS OF GALAXIES (2011, background): “Ia” explosion following the final Helium flash in an ultracompact white-dwarf whitedwarf binary (Bildsten et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2010).”
• Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, result): “However, Bildsten et al. (2007) found that, for helium WD donors, the higher mass transfer rates lead to smaller helium layers at explosion time, and better agreement with observations (e.g. Fink, Hillebrandt & Röpke 2007).”
• Nearby supernova rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search – I. The methods and data base (2010, background): “Ia” supernova (Bildsten et al. 2007), or at least some 10 http://web.oapd.inaf.it/supern/cat/ 11 http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/sn.list Nearby Supernova Rates from LOSS: I.”
• DETONATIONS IN SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR-MASS C+O WHITE DWARFS (2010, background): “Even for the low shell masses of Bildsten et al. (2007), Fink et al. (2010) find that a secondary core detonation is possible.”
• SURFACE DETONATIONS IN DOUBLE DEGENERATE BINARY SYSTEMS TRIGGERED BY ACCRETION STREAM INSTABILITIES (2009, background): “For decades, Type Ia supernovae (SNe) have been employed as standard candles.”
• ACCELERATING COMPACT OBJECT MERGERS IN TRIPLE SYSTEMS WITH THE KOZAI RESONANCE: A MECHANISM FOR “PROMPT” TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE, GAMMA-RAY BURSTS, AND OTHER EXOTICA (2010, unknown): “Ia” supernovae (Bildsten et al. 2007).”
• THE LONG-TERM EVOLUTION OF DOUBLE WHITE DWARF MERGERS (2011, background): “The double detonation scenario has received more attention recently due to the prediction of He detonations in pre-AM CVn systems (Bildsten et al. 2007; Fink et al. 2007, 2010; Shen & Bildsten 2009; Shen et al. 2010; Sim et al. 2010; Woosley & Kasen 2011).”
• HELIUM-IGNITED VIOLENT MERGERS AS A UNIFIED MODEL FOR NORMAL AND RAPIDLY DECLINING TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2013, background): “However, in these models it is assumed that the He shell grows massive enough to be ignited by a thermal instability (Bildsten et al. 2007).”
• DOUBLE-DETONATION SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR SUPERNOVAE: SYNTHETIC OBSERVABLES FOR MINIMUM HELIUM SHELL MASS MODELS (2010, background): “Fink et al. (2010) adopted the minimum helium shell masses of Bildsten et al. (2007) and investigated whether such low-mass helium 1067 detonations are capable of triggering a secondary detonation in the C/O core of the WD.”
• Double-detonation sub-Chandrasekhar supernovae: can minimum helium shell masses detonate the core? (2010, methodology): “…is still some discrepancy between these predictions and those made from observations, which tend to be significantly lower (Deloye et al. 2005; Bildsten et al. 2007). helium detonation shock hits the core/shell interface (“edge-lit”), or with some delay, after the shock has converged near the…”
• Models of low-mass helium white dwarfs including gravitational settling, thermal and chemical diffusion, and rotational mixing (2016, background): “Ia and Ca-rich supernovae (Bildsten et al. 2007; Iben & Tutukov 1984; Perets et al. 2010; Foley 2015), as well as exotic systems such as AM CVn stars, R Coronae Borealis (R CrB), and single subdwarf B/O stars (Kilic et al. 2014; Solheim 2010; Clayton 2013; Heber 2016).”
• Prospects for detection of detached double white dwarf binaries with Gaia, LSST and LISA (2017, background): “…et al. 1998; Perlmutter et al. 1999), AM CVn systems (Nelemans et al. 2001a; Marsh, Nelemans & Steeghs 2004; Solheim 2010) and ‘fast optical transients’ including Ia supernovae, Ca-rich transients and fast/bright transients (Bildsten et al. 2007; Perets et al. 2010; Garcı́a-Berro et al. 2017).”
• TYPE Iax SUPERNOVAE: A NEW CLASS OF STELLAR EXPLOSION (2012, result): “Ia” model (Bildsten et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2010) shares many characteristics with SNe Iax.”
• SN 2008ha: AN EXTREMELY LOW LUMINOSITY AND EXCEPTIONALLY LOW ENERGY SUPERNOVA (2009, methodology): “Ia” model, first proposed by Bildsten et al. (2007), a binary WD system similar to AM CVn with a low accretion rate will eventually undergo a particularly luminous outburst caused by nuclear burning of a helium shell with M ≈ 0.05 M⊙.”