Dark Matter Admixed Type Ia Supernovae

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamic simulations to explore how dark matter cores in white dwarfs influence Type Ia supernova explosions, revealing that increased dark matter weakens explosions and reduces nickel-56 production, aligning with sub-luminous supernova observations.

Contribution

First detailed hydrodynamic simulation of dark matter's effect on Type Ia supernova explosions with implications for sub-luminous supernovae.

Findings

Larger dark matter cores weaken supernova explosions.

Nickel-56 production decreases with increasing dark matter mass.

Simulated light curves match sub-luminous supernova observations.

Abstract

We perform two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations for the thermonuclear explosion of Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs with dark matter (DM) cores in Newtonian gravity. We include a 19-isotope nuclear reaction network and make use of the pure turbulent deflagration model as the explosion mechanism in our simulations. Our numerical results show that the general properties of the explosion depend quite sensitively on the mass of the DM core M$_{{\rm DM}}$: a larger M$_{{\rm DM}}$ generally leads to a weaker explosion and a lower mass of synthesized iron-peaked elements. In particular, the total mass of $^{56}$Ni produced can drop from about 0.3 to 0.03 $M_{\odot}$ as M$_{{\rm DM}}$ increases from 0.01 to 0.03 $M_{\odot}$. We have also constructed the bolometric light curves obtained from our simulations and found that our results match well with the observational data of sub-luminous Type-Ia supernovae.