The helium star donor channel for the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae

By B. Wang, X. Meng, X. Chen, Z. Han. 2009

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play an important role in astrophysics, especially in the study of cosmic evolution. Several progenitor models for SNe Ia have been proposed in the past. In this paper we carry out a detailed study of the He star donor channel, in which a carbon-oxygen white dwarf (CO WD) accretes material from a He main-sequence star or a He subgiant to increase its mass to the Chandrasekhar mass. Employing Eggleton's stellar evolution code with an optically thick wind assumption, and adopting the prescription of Kato & Hachisu for the mass accumulation efficiency of the He-shell flashes on to the WDs, we performed binary evolution calculations for about 2600 close WD binary systems. According to these calculations, we mapped out the initial parameters for SNe Ia in the orbital period-secondary mass (log P(i)-M(2)(i)) plane for various WD masses from this channel. The study shows that the He star donor channel is noteworthy for producing SNe Ia (similar to 1.2 x 10(-3) yr(-1) in our Galaxy), and that the progenitors from this channel may appear as supersoft X-ray sources. Importantly, this channel can explain SNe Ia with short delay times (similar to 10(8) yr), which is consistent with the recent observational implications of young populations of SN Ia progenitors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd6e19a75383396dca4144a41f0e23bc63a5891d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Robert G. Izzard
2. G. Nelemans
3. D. Maoz
4. F. Mannucci
5. J. Vink
6. F. Verbunt
7. J. Claeys
8. O. Pols

In Instrumentation

1. Robert G. Izzard
2. G. Nelemans
3. D. Maoz
4. F. Mannucci
5. J. Vink
6. J. Claeys
7. F. Verbunt
8. O. Pols

Citations in the corpus

• Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “…steady burning, and WD mass growth, but again that a hot helium layer ignites at some point, possibly ejecting much of the accumulated mass. Alternatively, the donor may be a helium-rich star, avoiding the challenges involved in mass gain through hydrogen-rich accretion (see Wang et al. 2009a).”
• Theoretical uncertainties of the Type Ia supernova rate (2014, methodology): “…model, with- out investigating in great detail the uncertainties in their model, or they investigated one uncertainty in binary evolution, such as the common envelope evolution (e.g. Yungelson & Livio 2000; Ruiter et al. 2009; Wang et al. 2009a, 2010; Mennekens et al. 2010; Toonen et al. 2012).”