Using the results of recent work in shear instabilities in stratified fluids, we show that the resonant interaction between large-scale flows in the accreted H/He envelope of white dwarf stars and interfacial gravity waves can mix with the star's envelope with the white dwarf's surface material, leading to the enhancement of the envelope's C/O abundance to levels required by extant models for nova outbursts.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0110684,
title = {On the C/O Enrichment of Novae Ejecta},
author = {R. Rosner and A. Alexakis and Y. Young and J. Truran and W. Hillebrandt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0110684},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 0 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Lett