Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs are the progenitors of a small fraction of Type Ia supernovae according to nucleosythesis constraints
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Oxford University Press
Materia
Hydrodynamics Nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances Supernova: general White dwarfs Galaxies: abundances
Date
2022-09-08Referencia bibliográfica
Eduardo Bravo... [et al.]. Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs are the progenitors of a small fraction of Type Ia supernovae according to nucleosythesis constraints, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 517, Issue 1, November 2022, Pages L31–L35, [https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slac103]
Sponsorship
MICINN/AEI I + D + I PGC2018-095317-B-C21; FEDER 'A way of doing Europe'; INAF-mainstream project 'Type Ia Supernovae Parent Galaxies: Expected Results from LSST'; University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli (Italy); 'Programme National de Physique Stellaire' (PNPS) of CNRS/INSU - CEA; Centre National D'etudes Spatiales; ESO Scientific Visitor Programme in Garching PID2021-123110NB-I00Abstract
The precise progenitor system of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), whether it is a white dwarf (WD) close to the Chandrasekhar limit or substantially less massive, has been a matter of debate for decades. Recent research by our group on the accretion and simmering phases preceding the explosion of a massive WD has shown that the central density at thermal runaway lies in the range 3.6 −6.3 ×10 9 g cm −3 for reasonable choices of accretion rate on to the WD and progenitor metallicity. In this work, we have computed one-dimensional simulations of the explosion of such WDs, with special emphasis on the chemical composition of the ejecta, which in all cases is extremely rich in neutronized isotopes of chromium ( 54 Cr) and titanium ( 50 Ti). We show that, in order to reconcile such a nucleosynthesis with the isotopic abundances of the Solar system, Chandrasekhar-mass WDs can account for at most 26 per cent of normal-luminosity SNe Ia, or at most 20 per cent of all SNe Ia.