Strongly magnetized electron degenerate gas: Highly super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs
Abstract
We consider a relativistic, degenerate, electron gas under the influence of a strong magnetic field, which describes magnetized white dwarfs. Landau quantization changes the density of states available to the electrons, thus modifying the underlying equation of state. We obtain the mass-radius relations for such white dwarfs and show that it is possible to have magnetized white dwarfs with a mass significantly greater than the Chandrasekhar limit in the range 2.3 - 2.6 M_sun. Recent observations of peculiar type Ia supernovae - SN 2006gz, SN 2007if, SN 2009dc, SN 2003fg - seem to suggest super-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs with masses up to 2.4 - 2.8 M_sun, as their most likely progenitors and interestingly our results lie within the observational limits.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1302.5763,
title = {Strongly magnetized electron degenerate gas: Highly super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs},
author = {Upasana Das and Banibrata Mukhopadhyay},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.5763},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
3 pages including 1 figure; to appear in the Proceedings of 13th Marcel Grossmann Meeting (MG13), Stockholm, Sweden, 1-7 July 2012; based on the talk given at the Parallel Session SO4 "White Dwarf Pulsars and Rotating White Dwarf Theory"