Shock Breakout from Type Ia Supernova
Anthony L. Piro (1), Philip Chang (1, 2), and Nevin N. Weinberg (1), ((1) UC Berkeley, (2) CITA)

TL;DR
This paper proposes that shock breakout from a Type Ia supernova provides observable signatures, such as X-ray flashes and early light curve features, which can confirm the detonation transition and inform progenitor models.
Contribution
It introduces the concept that shock breakout signatures can serve as direct evidence for the deflagration-to-detonation transition in Type Ia supernovae.
Findings
Predicted a ~20 keV X-ray flash lasting ~0.01 s with ~10^{40} ergs energy.
Identified a distinct cooling tail in the light curve with maximum magnitude of -9 to -10.
Estimated the observable rate of such events at ~60 per year within 80 Mpc.
Abstract
The mode of explosive burning in Type Ia SNe remains an outstanding problem. It is generally thought to begin as a subsonic deflagration, but this may transition into a supersonic detonation (the DDT). We argue that this transition leads to a breakout shock, which would provide the first unambiguous evidence that DDTs occur. Its main features are a hard X-ray flash (~20 keV) lasting ~0.01 s with a total radiated energy of ~10^{40} ergs, followed by a cooling tail. This creates a distinct feature in the visual light curve, which is separate from the nickel decay. This cooling tail has a maximum absolute visual magnitude of M_V = -9 to -10 at approximately 1 day, which depends most sensitively on the white dwarf radius at the time of the DDT. As the thermal diffusion wave moves in, the composition of these surface layers may be imprinted as spectral features, which would help to discern…
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