Dark Matter Thermonuclear Supernova Ignition

TL;DR

This study explores how dark matter, particularly primordial black holes, may influence the ignition of Type Ia supernovae, providing a new perspective on their progenitor systems and potential dark matter interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate dark matter density near supernovae and suggests primordial black holes could be a plausible ignition mechanism, contrasting with WIMP models.

Findings

Primordial black holes with a specific mass distribution are consistent with supernova data.

WIMP ignition is deemed highly unlikely based on the analysis.

Dark matter in the form of PBHs aligns with existing constraints and supernova observations.

Abstract

We investigate local environmental effects from dark matter (DM) on thermonuclear supernovae (SNe Ia) using publicly available archival data of 224 low-redshift events, in an attempt to shed light on the SN Ia progenitor systems. SNe Ia are explosions of carbon-oxygen (CO) white dwarfs (WDs) that have recently been shown to explode at sub-Chandrasekhar masses; the ignition mechanism remains, however, unknown. Recently, it has been shown that both weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and macroscopic DM candidates such as primordial black holes (PBHs) are capable of triggering the ignition. Here, we present a method to estimate the DM density and velocity dispersion in the vicinity of SN Ia events and nearby WDs; we argue that (i) WIMP ignition is highly unlikely, and that (ii) DM in the form of PBHs distributed according to a (quasi-) log-normal mass distribution with peak $\log_{10}(m_0/1$g$)=24.9\pm 0.9$ and width $\sigma= 3.3\pm 1.0$ is consistent with SN Ia data, the nearby population of WDs and roughly consistent with other constraints from the literature.