Related papers: Merging White Dwarfs and Thermonuclear Supernovae
The flame born in the deep interior of a white dwarf that becomes a Type Ia supernova is subject to several instabilities. We briefly review these instabilities and the corresponding flame acceleration. We discuss the conditions necessary…
It is predicted that orbital decay by gravitational-wave radiation and tidal interaction will cause some close-binary stars to merge within a Hubble time. The merger of a helium-core white dwarf with a main-sequence star can produce a red…
Type Ia supernovae are the outcome of the explosion of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf in a close binary system. They are thought to be the main contributors to the galactic nucleosynthesis of iron-peak elements, with important contributions to…
Classical novae are caused by mass transfer episodes from a main sequence star onto a white dwarf via Roche lobe overflow. This material forms an accretion disk around the white dwarf. Ultimately, a fraction of this material spirals in and…
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) originate from the thermonuclear explosion of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO WDs), giving rise to luminous optical transients. A relatively common variety of subluminous SNe Ia events, referred to as SNe Iax, are…
Merging white dwarfs are a possible progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). While it is not entirely clear if and when an explosion is triggered in such systems, numerical models suggest that a detonation might be initiated before the…
We present three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of mergers between low-mass hybrid HeCO white dwarfs (WDs), offering new insights into the diversity of thermonuclear transients. Unlike previously studied mergers involving…
In the far future long after star formation has ceased the universe will be populated by sparse degenerate remnants, mostly white dwarfs, though their ultimate fate is an open question. These white dwarfs will cool and freeze solid into…
Supernova Ia are bright explosive events that can be used to estimate cosmological distances, allowing us to study the expansion of the Universe. They are understood to result from a thermonuclear detonation in a white dwarf that formed…
Recent observational evidence has demonstrated that white dwarf (WD) mergers are a highly efficient mechanism for mass accretion onto WDs in the galaxy. In this paper, we show that WD mergers naturally produce highly-magnetized,…
The thermonuclear runaway that culminates in the explosion of a Chandrasekhar mass white dwarf as a Type Ia supernova begins centuries before the star actually explodes. Here, using a 3D anelastic code, we examine numerically the convective…
Mergers of neutron stars (NS+NS) or neutron stars and stellar mass black holes (NS+BS) eject a small fraction of matter with a sub-relativistic velocity. Upon rapid decompression nuclear density medium condenses into neutron rich nuclei,…
Gravitational settling of 22Ne in cooling white dwarfs can affect the outcome of thermonuclear supernovae. We investigate how the supernova energetics and nucleosynthesis are in turn influenced by this process. We use realistic chemical…
Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are generally believed to be the result of the thermonuclear disruption of Chandrasekhar-mass carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, mainly because such thermonuclear explosions can account for the right amount of nickel,…
The merger of two white dwarfs (WDs) creates a differentially rotating remnant which is unstable to magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. These instabilities can lead to viscous evolution on a time-scale short compared to the thermal evolution…
We consider a binary stellar system, in which a low-mass, of 0.6 Msun, carbon-oxygen white dwarf (WD) mergers with a degenerate helium core of 0.4 Msun of a red giant. We analyse the outcome of a merger within a common envelope (CE). We…
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are thought to be thermonuclear explosion of white dwarfs (WDs). Their progenitors are not well understood. One popular scenario is the double-degenerate (DD) scenario, which attributes SNe Ia to WD-WD binary…
Dark matter that is capable of sufficiently heating a local region in a white dwarf will trigger runaway fusion and ignite a type Ia supernova. This was originally proposed in Graham et al. (2015) and used to constrain primordial black…
The first solids that form as a white dwarf (WD) starts to crystallize are expected to be greatly enriched in actinides. Previously [PRL 126, 1311010] we found that these solids might support a nuclear fission chain reaction that could…
Because calibrated light curves of Type Ia supernovae have become a major tool to determine the local expansion rate of the Universe and also its geometrical structure, considerable attention has been given to models of these events over…