On the brightness distribution of Type Ia supernovae from violent white dwarf mergers

TL;DR

This paper models the brightness distribution of Type Ia supernovae resulting from violent white dwarf mergers, showing it closely matches observed distributions and depends on specific binary evolution phases.

Contribution

It introduces a relationship between primary white dwarf mass and supernova brightness, linking binary evolution models to observed supernova brightness distributions.

Findings

Theoretical brightness distribution matches observed SNe Ia distribution.

Bright SNe Ia likely originate from mergers with primary WDs gaining 0.15-0.35 Msun.

Most bright SNe Ia from massive primaries have delay times under 500 Myr.

Abstract

We investigate the brightness distribution expected for thermonuclear explosions that might result from the ignition of a detonation during the violent merger of white dwarf (WD) binaries. Determining their brightness distribution is critical for evaluating whether such an explosion model could be responsible for a significant fraction of the observed population of SNe Ia. We argue that the brightness of an explosion realized via the violent merger model is determined by the mass of nickel 56 produced in the detonation of the primary WD. We use a set of sub-Chandrasekhar mass WD detonation models to derive a relationship between primary WD mass and expected peak bolometric brightness. We use this relationship to convert the masses of merging primary WDs from binary population models to a predicted distribution of explosion brightness. We find a striking similarity between the shape of our theoretical peak-magnitude distribution and that observed for SNe Ia: our model produces a brightness distribution that roughly covers the range and matches the shape of the one observed for SNe Ia. However, this agreement hinges on a particular phase of mass accretion during binary evolution: the primary WD gains ~0.15-0.35 Msun from a slightly-evolved helium star companion. We also find that with high probability, violent WD mergers involving the most massive primaries (which should produce bright SNe) have delay times <500 Myr (Abridged).