String Landscape and Supernovae Ia

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel model where supernovae Ia are triggered by a phase transition to exact supersymmetry within white dwarfs, based on string landscape ideas, offering an alternative to standard accretion models.

Contribution

It introduces a supersymmetry-based mechanism for SN Ia initiation, connecting string landscape concepts with astrophysical phenomena and addressing limitations of existing models.

Findings

Model explains SN Ia data without accretion issues

Supersymmetry phase transition induces fusion in white dwarfs

Collapse of susy bubble leads to black hole formation or stable susy objects

Abstract

We present a model for the triggering of Supernovae Ia (SN Ia) by a phase transition to exact supersymmetry (susy) in the core of a white dwarf star. The model, which accomodates the data on SN Ia and avoids the problems of the standard astrophysical accretion based picture, is based on string landscape ideas and assumes that the decay of the false broken susy vacuum is enhanced at high density. In a slowly expanding susy bubble, the conversion of pairs of fermions to pairs of degenerate scalars releases a significant amount of energy which induces fusion in the surrounding normal matter shell. After cooling, the absence of degeneracy pressure causes the susy bubble to collapse to a black hole of about 0.1 solar mass or to some other stable susy object.