On the evolution of rapidly rotating massive white dwarfs towards supernovae or collapses

By Sung-Chul Yoon, N. Langer. 2005

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A recent study indicated that the inner cores of rapidly accreting (M > 10 -7 M ○. yr -1 ) CO white dwarfs may rotate differentially, with a shear fate near the threshold value for the onset of the dynamical shear instability. Such differentially rotating white dwarfs have critical masses for thermonuclear explosion or electron-capture induced collapse that significantly exceed the canonical Chandrasekhar limit. Here, we construct two-dimensional differentially rotating white dwarf models with rotation laws resembling those of the one-dimensional models of the previous work. We derive analytic relations between the white dwarf mass, its angular momentum, and its rotational-, gravitational- and binding energy. We show that these relations are applicable for a wide range of angular velocity profiles, including solid body rotation. Taken at a central density of 2 x 10 9 g cm -3 they specify initial models for the thermonuclear explosion of rotating CO white dwarfs. At ρ c = 10 10 g cm -3 and 4 x 10 9 g cm -3 , they give criteria for the electron-capture induced collapse of rotating CO and ONeMg white dwarfs, respectively. We demonstrate that pre-explosion and pre-collapse conditions of both rigidly and differentially rotating white dwarfs are well established by the present work, which may facilitate future multi-dimensional simulations of type la supernova explosions and studies of the formation of millisecond pulsars and gamma-ray bursts from collapsing white dwarfs. Our results lead us to suggest various possible evolutionary scenarios for progenitors of type la supernovae, leading to a new paradigm of a variable mass of exploding white dwarfs, at values well above the classical Chandrasekhar mass. Based on our 2D-models, we argue that the supernova peak brightness is proportional to the white dwarf mass, which could explain various aspects of the diversity of type la supernovae, such as their variation in brightness, the dependence of their mean luminosity on the host galaxy type, and the weak correlation between ejecta velocity and peak brightness.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/965741882cf588b7ac459871449bb3d7c794dbc3

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Citations in the corpus

Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “Yoon & Langer (2005) have therefore constructed models of differentially rotating WDs in which, for some radially increasing profiles of angular rotation speed, the maximal stable WD mass reaches ∼ 2M .”
A circumbinary disc in the final stages of common envelope and the core-degenerate scenario for Type Ia supernovae (2011, background): “We speculate, based on the results of Yoon & Langer (2005), that this time can be as long as & few × 109 yr, and that the core-degenerate scenario is another channel leading to a SN Ia.”
High luminosity, slow ejecta and persistent carbon lines: SN 2009dc challenges thermonuclear explosion scenarios (2010, background): “Yoon & Langer (2005) indeed see an increase in the specific binding energy by a factor of ∼1.7 when going from a nonrotating MCh-WD to a rotating WD with 2 M .”
NEUTRINO SIGNATURES AND THE NEUTRINO-DRIVEN WIND IN BINARY NEUTRON STAR MERGERS (2008, background): “This is a general result for fast-rotating neutron stars (or other degenerate objects like white dwarfs) which has been documented in various contexts in the past (Ostriker & Mark 1968; Hachisu 1986; Liu & Lindblom 2001; Yoon & Langer 2005; Rosswog & Davies 2002; Kiuchi & Kotake 2008).”
The helium star donor channel for the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae (2009, background): “Also, the maximum stable mass of a rotating WD may be above the Ch mass, i.e., the super-Ch mass WD explosions (Uenishi et al. 2003; Yoon & Langer 2005; Chen & Li 2009).”
NEARBY SUPERNOVA FACTORY OBSERVATIONS OF SN 2007if: FIRST TOTAL MASS MEASUREMENT OF A SUPER-CHANDRASEKHAR-MASS PROGENITOR (2010, methodology): “A separate question arises regarding the widespread use of the differentially rotating models of Yoon & Langer (2005) in treatments of super-Chandrasekhar-mass SNe Ia (Howell et al. 2006; Jeffery, Branch, & Baron 2006; Maeda & Iwamoto 2009), including this paper (see below).”
Remnant evolution after a carbon–oxygen white dwarf merger (2007, methodology): “The mass of the exploding white dwarf should depend on the amount of angular momentum (Yoon & Langer 2005) and cannot exceed the mass budget of merging white dwarfs.”
Dawes Review 6: The Impact of Companions on Stellar Evolution (2016, background): “The formation of progenitor systems of type Ib and Ic supernovae, the WR stars, can probably form by both wind mass loss and rotational mixing in rapidly spinning single stars (Yoon & Langer, 2005) as well as binary interactions.”
Theoretical uncertainties of the Type Ia supernova rate (2014, background): “A merger product of 2.4M⊙ can lead to an overluminous SN Ia if all its mass is burned (e.g. Yoon & Langer 2005), or –if only 1.4M⊙ is burned– in about 1M⊙ of carbon and oxygen which remains unburned, which can be observed in the spectrum.”
Are the Models for Type Ia Supernova Progenitors Consistent with the Properties of Supernova Remnants? (2007, background): “Another possibility is that accretion wind outflows are not always present in these systems—for instance, if the rotation of the WD increases the accretion efficiency to the point that only a small fraction of systems present significant outflows, as proposed by Yoon & Langer (2005).”
The Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2012, background): “However, the spin-down time is still unclear, which may have a large range from<1 Myr to >1 Gyr (Lindblom, 1999; Yoon and Langer, 2005).”
On the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2018, unknown): “In the CD scenario, the merged product is a super-Chandrasekhar object, but it doesn’t explode because it is supported by rotation (e.g., Yoon & Langer 2005).”
Fourteen months of observations of the possible super-Chandrasekhar mass Type Ia Supernova 2009dc (2010, methodology): “Values of Eb range from about 0.5 × 1051 erg for a WD with a mass of 1.4 M to about 1.3 × 1051 erg for a WD with a mass of 2 M and a central density of 4 × 109 g cm−3 (Yoon & Langer 2005).”
Multidimensional Simulations of the Accretion-induced Collapse of White Dwarfs to Neutron Stars (2006, background): “DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We have presented a radiation/hydrodynamic study with the code VULCAN/2D of the collapse and postbounce evolution of massive rotating high-central-density white dwarfs, starting from physically consistent 2D rotational equilibrium configurations (Yoon & Langer 2005).”
Time-dependent Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer Calculations for Three-dimensional Supernova Spectra, Light Curves, and Polarization (2006, background): “…e.g., jets, off-center ignition (Khokhlov et al. 1999; MacFadyen & Woosley 1999; Plewa et al. 2004), or from asphericities in the progenitor star or its surrounding medium, e.g., rapid rotation of the progenitor, the presence of a binary companion star (Marietta et al. 2000; Yoon & Langer 2005).”