English

Primordial Black Hole Triggered Type Ia Supernovae I: Impact on Explosion Dynamics and Light Curves

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-10-01 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) in the asteroid-mass window are compelling dark matter candidates, made plausible by the existence of black holes and by the variety of mechanisms of their production in the early universe. If a PBH falls into a white dwarf (WD), the strong tidal forces can generate enough heat to trigger a thermonuclear runaway explosion, depending on the WD mass and the PBH orbital parameters. In this work, we investigate the WD explosion triggered by the passage of PBH. We perform 2D simulations of the WD undergoing thermonuclear explosion in this scenario, with the predicted ignition site as the parameter assuming the deflagration-detonation transition model. We study the explosion dynamics and predict the associated light curves and nucleosynthesis. We find that the model sequence predicts the light curves which align with the Phillip's relation (BmaxB_{\max} vs. ΔM15\Delta M_{15}). Our models hint at a unifying approach in triggering Type Ia supernovae without involving two distinctive evolutionary tracks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.21041,
  title  = {Primordial Black Hole Triggered Type Ia Supernovae I: Impact on Explosion Dynamics and Light Curves},
  author = {Shing-Chi Leung and Seth Walther and Ken'ichi Nomoto and Alexander Kusenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.21041},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 36 figures. Submitted to Astrophysical Journal on Jun 12 2025, accepted on Jul 25 2025, published on Sep 11 2025. Reference updated