Long-term evolution of surviving companion stars of Type Iax supernovae

TL;DR

This study models the long-term evolution of main-sequence companion stars surviving Type Iax supernovae, predicting their luminosity and visibility over thousands of years post-explosion, aiding in identifying progenitor systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach by integrating 3D hydrodynamical simulations with stellar evolution models to study surviving companions of SNe Iax.

Findings

Surviving companions can become significantly more luminous for up to 10,000 years.

They are likely visible about 1,000 days after the supernova explosion.

The models help interpret late-time observations of SNe Iax.

Abstract

The nature of the progenitors and explosion mechanism of Type Iax supernovae (SNe Iax) remain a mystery. The single-degenerate (SD) systems that involve the incomplete pure deflagration explosions of near-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs (WDs) have recently been proposed for producing SNe Iax, in which non-degenerate companions are expected to survive from SN explosions. In this work we concentrate on the main-sequence (MS) donor SD progenitor systems. By mapping the computed companion models from three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of ejecta-companion interaction into a one-dimensional stellar evolution code MESA, we investigate the long-term appearance and observational signatures of surviving MS companions of SNe Iax by tracing their post-impact evolution. Depending on different MS companion models, it is found that the shocked surviving companion stars can significantly expand and evolve to be more luminous (5-500 Lsun) for a time-scale of 10-1e4 yr. Comparing with the late-time light curve of an observed SN Iax (SN 2005hk), it is suggested that surviving MS companions of SNe Iax would expect to be visible about 1000 days after the explosion when SN itself has been faded.