Related papers: Nuclear fission chain reaction in cooling white dw…
The first solids that form as a cooling white dwarf (WD) starts to crystallize are expected to be greatly enriched in actinides. This is because the melting points of WD matter scale as $Z^{5/3}$ and actinides have the largest charge $Z$.…
Type-Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are powerful stellar explosions that provide important distance indicators in cosmology. Recently, we proposed a new SN Ia mechanism that involves a nuclear fission chain reaction in an isolated white dwarf (WD)…
Type-Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are powerful stellar explosions that provide important distance indicators in cosmology. Recently, we proposed a new SN Ia mechanism that involves a nuclear fission chain-reaction in an isolated white dwarf [PRL…
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…
The merger of two white dwarfs (WDs) has for many years not been considered as the favoured model for the progenitor system of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). But recent years have seen a change of opinion as a number of studies, both…
We present a new mechanism for Type Ia supernova explosions in massive white dwarfs. The proposed scenario follows from relaxing the assumption of symmetry in the model and involves a detonation created in an unconfined environment. The…
Recently, Cheng et al. identified a number of massive white dwarfs (WD) that appear to have an additional heat source providing a luminosity near $\approx 10^{-3}L_\odot$ for multiple Gyr. In this paper we explore heating from electron…
We have computed the physical processes involved in a head-on collision between a neutron star (NS) and a white dwarf (WD). The outcomes of such collisions vary depending on the mass and type of the WD. We have separately examined the…
In a dense star cluster core, a tidal disruption event (TDE) of a white dwarf (WD) can occur if the WD passes within the tidal radius of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). Very close encounters cause extreme tidal compression in the…
We study stellar binary evolution that leads to the formation of a white dwarf (WD) that explodes in a thermonuclear supernova at the termination of a common envelope evolution (CEE) shortly before the core of its companion explodes as a…
Type Ia Supernovae are thought to be thermonuclear explosions of massive white dwarfs (WD). We present the first study of multi-dimensional effects during the final hours prior to the thermonuclear runaway which leads to the explosion. The…
Neutron-star (NS) - white-dwarf (WD) mergers may give rise to observable explosive transients, but have been little explored. We use 2D coupled hydrodynamical-thermonuclear FLASH-code simulations to study the evolution of WD debris-disks…
Thermonuclear (type Ia) supernovae are explosions in accreting white dwarfs, but the exact scenario leading to these explosions is still unclear. An important step to clarify this point is to understand the behaviour of accreting white…
We construct one dimensional steady-state models of accretion disks produced by the tidal disruption of a white dwarf (WD) by a neutron star (NS) or stellar mass black hole (BH). At radii r <~ 1e8.5-1e9 cm the midplane density and…
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…
We explore the evolution of thermonuclear supernova explosions when the progenitor white dwarf star ignites asymmetrically off-center. Several numerical simulations are carried out in two and three dimensions to test the consequences of…
The explosion of a white dwarf of mass 1.36 M$_\odot$ has been simulated in three dimensions with the aid of a SPH code. The explosion follows the delayed detonation paradigma. In this case the deflagration-detonation transition is induced…
The explosion energy of thermonuclear (Type Ia) supernovae is derived from the difference in nuclear binding energy liberated in the explosive fusion of light 'fuel' nuclei, predominantly carbon and oxygen, into more tightly bound nuclear…
The precise nature of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) progenitors remains a mystery, but the detonation of a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf (WD) has become a promising candidate. There is a growing body of work suggesting that the carbon core…
We present results from general relativistic calculations of nuclear ignition in white dwarf stars triggered by near encounters with rotating intermediate mass black holes with different spin and alignment parameters. These encounters…