The Evolution of Hypervelocity Supernova Survivors and the Outcomes of Interacting Double White Dwarf Binaries

TL;DR

This paper investigates the evolution and outcomes of hypervelocity supernova survivors from double white dwarf binaries, explaining the properties of cooler survivors and linking them to observed hypervelocity stars and peculiar transients.

Contribution

It introduces a model explaining cool hypervelocity survivors through Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction and connects these to observed populations, expanding understanding of double white dwarf binary outcomes.

Findings

Cool D6 stars explained by contraction after mass loss and heating.

Approximately 2% of Type Ia supernovae leave hypervelocity survivors.

LP 40-365 stars are likely remnants of oxygen/neon white dwarfs disrupted by deflagrations.

Abstract

The recent prediction and discovery of hypervelocity supernova survivors has provided strong evidence that the "dynamically driven double-degenerate double-detonation" (D6) Type Ia supernova scenario occurs in Nature. In this model, the accretion stream from the secondary white dwarf in a double white dwarf binary strikes the primary white dwarf violently enough to trigger a helium shell detonation, which in turn triggers a carbon/oxygen core detonation. If the secondary white dwarf survives the primary's explosion, it will be flung away as a hypervelocity star. While previous work has shown that the hotter observed D6 stars can be broadly understood as secondaries whose outer layers have been heated by their primaries' explosions, the properties of the cooler D6 stars have proven difficult to reproduce. In this paper, we show that the cool D6 stars can be explained by the Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction of helium or carbon/oxygen white dwarfs that underwent significant mass loss and core heating prior to and during the explosion of their white dwarf companions. We find that the current population of known D6 candidates is consistent with ~2% of Type Ia supernovae leaving behind a hypervelocity surviving companion. We also calculate the evolution of hot, low-mass oxygen/neon stars and find reasonable agreement with the properties of the LP 40-365 class of hypervelocity survivors, suggesting that these stars are the kicked remnants of near-Chandrasekhar-mass oxygen/neon white dwarfs that were partially disrupted by oxygen deflagrations. We use these results as motivation for schematic diagrams showing speculative outcomes of interacting double white dwarf binaries, including long-lived merger remnants, Type Ia supernovae, and several kinds of peculiar transients.