Violation of Chandrasekhar Mass Limit: The Exciting Potential of Strongly Magnetized White Dwarfs

TL;DR

This paper explores how extremely strong magnetic fields in white dwarfs alter their structure, potentially allowing them to surpass the traditional Chandrasekhar mass limit and reach masses around 2.3 solar masses.

Contribution

It introduces a modified equation of state for magnetized white dwarfs considering Landau quantization, proposing the existence of super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs with higher masses.

Findings

White dwarfs can exceed the Chandrasekhar limit under strong magnetic fields.

Landau quantization significantly affects the white dwarf equation of state.

Masses up to approximately 2.3 solar masses are possible in such conditions.

Abstract

We consider a relativistic, degenerate, electron gas under the influence of a strong magnetic field, which describes magnetized white dwarfs. Landau quantization changes the density of states available to the electrons, thus modifying the underlying equation of state. In the presence of very strong magnetic fields a maximum of either one, two or three Landau level(s) is/are occupied. We obtain the mass-radius relations for such white dwarfs and their detailed investigation leads us to propose the existence of white dwarfs having a mass ~2.3M_Sun, which overwhelmingly exceeds the Chandrasekhar mass limit.