A possible evolutionary scenario of highly magnetized super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs: progenitors of peculiar type Ia supernovae

TL;DR

This paper proposes an evolutionary pathway for highly magnetized super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs, potentially explaining peculiar type Ia supernovae, supported by recent observational discoveries of magnetized white dwarfs.

Contribution

It introduces a new evolutionary scenario involving flux freezing that leads to super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs as progenitors of peculiar supernovae, linking theory with recent observations.

Findings

Theoretical mass range matches observational data.

Flux freezing can produce super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs.

Recent SDSS discoveries support the proposed scenario.

Abstract

Several recently discovered peculiar type Ia supernovae seem to demand an altogether new formation theory that might help explain the puzzling dissimilarities between them and the standard type Ia supernovae. The most striking aspect of the observational analysis is the necessity of invoking super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs having masses ~ 2.1-2.8M_sun, M_sun being the mass of Sun, as their most probable progenitors. Strongly magnetized white dwarfs having super-Chandrasekhar masses were already established to be potential candidates for the progenitors of peculiar type Ia supernovae. Owing to the Landau quantization of the underlying electron degenerate gas, theoretical results yielded the observationally inferred mass range. Here we sketch a possible evolutionary scenario by which super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs could be formed by accretion on to a commonly observed magnetized white dwarf, invoking the phenomenon of flux freezing. This opens the multiple possible evolutions ending in supernova explosions of super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs having masses within the range stated above. We point out that our proposal has observational support, like, the recent discovery of a large number of magnetized white dwarfs by SDSS.