Violent mergers of nearly equal-mass white dwarf as progenitors of subluminous Type Ia supernovae

By Rüdiger Pakmor, Stephan Hachinger, Friedrich K. Röpke, W. Hillebrandt. 2011

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. The origin of subluminous Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) has long eluded any explanation, because all Chandrasekhar-mass models have severe problems reproducing them. Recently, it has been proposed that violent mergers of two white dwarfs of 0.9 M� could lead to subluminous SNe Ia events that resemble 1991bg-like SNe Ia. Aims. Here we investigate whether this scenario still works for mergers of two white dwarfs with a mass ratio below one. We aim to determine the range of mass ratios for which a detonation still forms during the merger, as only those events will lead to an SN Ia. This range is an important ingredient for population synthesis and one decisive point for judging the viability of the scenario. In addition, we perform a resolution study of one of the models. Finally we discuss the connection between violent white dwarf mergers

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3fa1bd3771deae9b1597856ddec02df850190b66

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

NORMAL TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE FROM VIOLENT MERGERS OF WHITE DWARF BINARIES (2012, methodology): “However, Dan et al. (2011) were only able to run the simulation with a resolution of 2×105 particles (for comparison, the violent merger calculations by Pakmor et al. (2010, 2011) used 2×106 particles).”
Theoretical uncertainties of the Type Ia supernova rate (2014, background): “The results of Pakmor et al. (2010, 2011) indicate that t e violent merger of two CO WDs only results in an explosion for a limited range of mass ratios.”
Sub-Chandrasekhar-mass White Dwarf Detonations Revisited (2017, background): “Thus, double WD binaries have the potential to explain all SNe Ia if just ∼ 10% of double WD mergers lead to SNe Ia via double detonations (or via direct carbon ignition; Pakmor et al. 2010, 2011, 2012; Kashyap et al. 2015).”
The delay-time distribution of Type Ia supernovae from Sloan II (2012, background): “CO WD mergers can indeed produce a SN Ia, which is still an open question (e.g. Guillochon et al. 2010; van Kerkwijk et al. 2010; Pakmor et al. 2011).”
THE LONG-TERM EVOLUTION OF DOUBLE WHITE DWARF MERGERS (2011, background): “…this paper, these studies have found that both components, instead of just one, are tidally disrupted (Lorén-Aguilar et al. 2009; van Kerkwijk et al. 2010) or that the resulting merger is more violent and reaches higher temperatures than in the unequal mass case (Pakmor et al. 2010, 2011).”