Related papers: White Dwarfs in Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies: A New C…
Recent advances in time-domain astronomy have uncovered a new class of optical transients with timescales shorter than typical supernovae and a wide range of peak luminosities. Several subtypes have been identified within this broad class,…
Calcium-rich (Ca-rich) transients are a new class of supernovae (SNe) that are known for their comparatively rapid evolution, modest peak luminosities, and strong nebular calcium emission lines. Currently, the progenitor systems of Ca-rich…
We hypothesize that at least some of the recently discovered class of calcium-rich gap transients are tidal detonation events of white dwarfs (WDs) by black holes (BHs) or possibly neutron stars. We show that the properties of the…
We present calculations indicating the possibility of a new class of Type I supernovae. In this new paradigm relativistic terms enhance the self gravity of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf as it passes or orbits near a black hole. This…
The transit of primordial black holes through a white dwarf causes localized heating around the trajectory of the black hole through dynamical friction. For sufficiently massive black holes, this heat can initiate runaway thermonuclear…
We show that a star orbiting close enough to an adiabatically grown supermassive black hole can capture a large number of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) during its lifetime. WIMP annihilation energy release in low- to…
White dwarfs (WDs) can be tidally disrupted only by massive black holes (MBHs) with masses less than $\sim10^5 M_\odot$. These tidal interactions feed material to the MBH well above its Eddington limit, with the potential to launch a…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are the most dark matter dominated systems in the nearby Universe and their origin is one of the outstanding puzzles of how galaxies form. Dwarf spheroidals are poor in gas and stars, making them unusually faint,…
From the first two seasons of the Palomar Transient Factory, we identify three peculiar transients (PTF09dav, PTF10iuv, PTF11bij) with five distinguishing characteristics: peak luminosity in the gap between novae and supernovae (M_R = 15.5…
The progenitor systems of the class of "Ca-rich transients" is a key open issue in time domain astrophysics. These intriguing objects exhibit unusually strong calcium line emissions months after explosion, fall within an intermediate…
We propose that luminous transients, including novae and supernovae, can be used to detect the faintest galaxies in the universe. Beyond a few Mpc, dwarf galaxies with stellar masses $<10^6 M_{\odot}$ will likely be too faint and/or too low…
The environments of explosive transients link their progenitors to the underlying stellar population, providing critical clues for their origins. However, some Ca-rich supernovae (SNe) and short gamma ray burst (sGRBs) appear to be located…
It is commonly accepted that collisions between white dwarfs (WD) are rare events that only occur in the dense interior of globular clusters or in the dense outskirts around the central galactic black holes, and are therefore disregarded as…
The discovery and study of highly transient sources, especially those which rise to high brightness and then fade to obscurity, has been a major part of modern astrophysics. Well known examples include supernovae and novae. A byproduct of…
We provide a general analysis on the properties of emitting material of some rapidly evolving and luminous transients discovered recently with the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. It is found that these transients are probably produced by a…
Recent observations suggest the existence of a white dwarf population in the Galactic halo, while others suggest that deuterium has been astrated in systems at high redshift and low metallicity. We propose that these observations could be…
We present deep VLT and HST observations of the nearest examples of calcium-rich 'gap' transients -- rapidly evolving transient events, with a luminosity intermediate between novae and supernovae. These sources are frequently found at large…
A subgroup of dwarf galaxies have characteristics of a possible evolutionary transition between star-forming systems and dwarf ellipticals. These systems host significant starbursts in combination with smooth, elliptical outer envelopes and…
We have serendipitously discovered that Leoncino Dwarf, an ultra-faint, low-metallicity record-holder dwarf galaxy, may have hosted a transient source, and possibly exhibited a change in morphology, a shift in the center of brightness, and…
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…