Related papers: Astro2020 Science White Paper: A Shocking Shift in…
We survey our understanding of classical novae: non-terminal, thermonuclear eruptions on the surfaces of white dwarfs in binary systems. The recent and unexpected discovery of GeV gamma-rays from Galactic novae has highlighted the…
Classical novae in the Milky Way have now been well-established as high-energy GeV $\gamma$-ray sources. In novae with main-sequence companions, this emission is believed to result from shocks internal to the nova ejecta, as a later fast…
Classical novae are runaway thermonuclear burning events on the surfaces of accreting white dwarfs in close binary star systems, sometimes appearing as new naked-eye sources in the night sky. The standard model of novae predicts that their…
Classical novae are thermonuclear explosions that occur on the surfaces of white dwarf stars in interacting binary systems (Bode & Evans 2008). It has long been thought that the luminosity of classical novae is powered by continued nuclear…
A classical nova results from runaway thermonuclear explosions on the surface of a white dwarf that accretes matter from a low-mass main-sequence stellar companion. In 2012 and 2013, three novae were detected in gamma rays and stood in…
Novae are thermonuclear explosions on the surface of accreting white dwarfs and are key laboratories for studying explosive nucleosynthesis, particle acceleration, shock physics, and binary evolution. Despite major progress driven by…
Classical novae produce radioactive nuclei which are emitters of gamma-rays in the MeV range. Some examples are the lines at 478 and 1275 keV (from 7Be and 22Na) and the positron-electron annihilation emission (511 keV line and a continuum…
Novae have long been expected to be sources of emission at several MeV from the decay of radioactive elements in the novae ejecta, however, they were not anticipated to be sources of continuum emission in the GeV energy domain. In March…
Novae are now firmly established as a high-energy (>100 MeV) gamma-ray source class by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). In symbiotic binary systems such as V407 Cyg 2010, there is a firm theoretical framework for the production of…
The discovery of novae as sources of ~GeV gamma-rays highlights the key role of shocks and relativistic particle acceleration in these transient systems. Although there is evidence for a spectral cut-off above energies ~1-100 GeV at…
Despite being one of the longest known classes of astrophysical transients, novae continue to present modern surprises. The Fermi-LAT discovered that many if not all novae are GeV gamma ray sources, even though theoretical models had not…
We present one-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations including radiative losses, of internal shocks in the outflows from classical novae, to explore the role of shocks in powering multi-wavelength emission from radio to gamma-ray…
Classical novae are the most common astrophysical thermonuclear explosions, occurring on the surfaces of white dwarf stars accreting gas from companions in binary star systems. Novae typically expel ~10^(-4) solar masses of material at…
Classical novae produce radioactive nuclei which are emitters of gamma-rays in the MeV range. Some examples are the lines at 478 and 1275 keV (from 7Be and 22Na) and the positron-electron annihilation emission, with the 511 keV line and a…
The mechanism of classical novae explosions is explained, together with some of their observational properties. The scarce but not null impact of novae in the chemical evolution of the Milky Way is analyzed, as well as their relevance for…
While nova eruptions produce some of the most common and dramatic dust formation episodes among astrophysical transients, the demographics of dust-forming novae remain poorly understood. Here, we present a statistical study of dust…
Observations with modern radio telescopes have revealed that classical novae are far from the simple, spherically symmetric events they were once assumed to be. It is now understood that novae provide excellent laboratories to study several…
Novae have been reported as transients for more than two thousand years. Their bright optical outbursts are the result of explosive nuclear burning of gas accreted from a binary companion onto a white dwarf. Novae containing a white dwarf…
The outbursts of novae are among the strongest explosions in the Universe. The eruptions involve physical processes that span the whole electromagnetic spectrum, demanding multifrequency observations. The photometric and spectroscopic…
The discovery of GeV gamma-rays from classical novae indicates that shocks and relativistic particle acceleration are energetically key in these events. Further evidence for shocks comes from thermal keV X-ray emission and an early peak in…