ORIGINS guest Stephane Blondin: Stable Nickel Production in Type Ia Supernovae: A Smoking Gun for the Progenitor Mass?

by Stefan Taubenberger (MPA / ESO), Christian Vogl (Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik)

Thursday 20 May 2021, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

Zoom

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are thought to result from the
thermonuclear disruption of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf (WD) star as
it approaches the Chandrasekhar-mass limit, through accretion from a
binary companion. Recent evidence however suggests that a significant
fraction of SNe Ia result from explosions of lower-mass WDs. These
sub-Chandrasekhar-mass WDs can in principle be differentiated from
their more massive counterparts based on the amount of stable
iron-group elements synthesized in the explosion. In particular,
stable Ni production can lead to the formation of forbidden lines of
[Ni II] in late-time SN Ia spectra. I will discuss the basic physics
of stable nickel production in SNe Ia and whether [Ni II] lines in
nebular SN Ia spectra can serve as a diagnostic of the progenitor
mass.

This presentation is a part of the weekly Garching Supernova Meetings and will be held virtually on zoom:

https://zoom.us/j/94647976289?pwd=ODllaXhVcjJMblFyTU05bWRuc3NzUT09