White Dwarf--White Dwarf collisions in AGN discs via close encounters
Yan Luo, Xiao-Jun Wu, Shu-Rui Zhang (USTC), Jian-Min Wang (IHEP), Luis, C. Ho (PKU), Ye-Fei Yuan (USTC)

TL;DR
This study uses N-body simulations to explore how white dwarf systems in AGN discs can lead to collisions, potentially observable as electromagnetic signals, with collision rates comparable to a small fraction of Type Ia supernovae.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed analysis of WD-WD collision dynamics in AGN discs considering initial orbital parameters and SMBH mass effects.
Findings
Close encounters mainly occur at specific orbital separations.
WD-WD collisions are frequent within certain initial conditions.
Collision rates are estimated at about 300 Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}.
Abstract
White dwarfs (WDs) in active galactic nucleus (AGNs) discs might migrate to the inner radii of the discs and form restricted three-body systems with two WDs moving around the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) in close orbits. These systems could be dynamical unstable, which can lead to very close encounters or direct collisions. In this work, we use N-body simulations to study the evolution of such systems with the different initial orbital separation , relative orbital inclination and SMBH mass . It is found that the close encounters of WDs mainly occur at , where is the mutual Hill radius. For , the majority of WDs move in horseshoe or tadpole orbits, and only few of them with small initial orbital phase difference undergo close encounters. For , WD-WD collisions…
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