Hydrogen Burning on Accreting White Dwarfs: Stability, Recurrent Novae, and the Post-Novae Supersoft Source

TL;DR

This paper models hydrogen burning stability on accreting white dwarfs, determining stability boundaries, recurrence times, and post-nova characteristics, with implications for understanding white dwarf evolution and supernova progenitors.

Contribution

It provides detailed time-dependent calculations of stability boundaries, recurrence times, and post-nova properties for accreting white dwarfs across a range of masses and accretion rates.

Findings

Stability boundary for white dwarfs between 0.51 and 1.34 solar masses.

Minimum recurrence times as a function of WD mass.

Predicted ejection masses and agreement with observed Teff in M31.

Abstract

We examine the properties of white dwarfs (WDs) accreting hydrogen-rich matter in and near the stable burning regime of accretion rates as modeled by time-dependent calculations done with Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). We report the stability boundary for WDs of masses between 0.51 solar masses and 1.34 solar masses as found via time-dependent calculations. We also examine recurrent novae that are accreting at rates close to, but below, the stable burning limit and report their recurrence times and ignition masses. Our dense grid in accretion rates finds the expected minimum possible recurrence times as a function of the WD mass. This enables inferences to be made about the minimum WD mass possible to reach a specific recurrence time. We compare our computational models of post-outburst novae to the stably burning WDs and explicitly calculate the duration and effective temperature (Teff) of the post-novae WD in the supersoft phase. We agree with the measured turnoff time - Teff relation in M31 by Henze and collaborators, infer WD masses in the 1.0-1.3 solar masses range, and predict ejection masses consistent with those observed. We close by commenting on the importance of the hot helium layer generated by stable or unstable hydrogen burning for the short- and long-term evolution of accreting white dwarfs.