Mass-feeding of jet-launching white dwarfs in grazing and common envelope evolution

TL;DR

This paper proposes a speculative scenario where white dwarfs can launch powerful jets during common envelope or grazing envelope evolution with giant stars, influencing the evolution and observable phenomena of these systems.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that white dwarfs can produce super-Eddington jets during envelope interactions, emphasizing the importance of jets in modeling common envelope evolution and luminous red novae.

Findings

Jets can be launched by accreting white dwarfs during CEE and GEE.

Jets may be powerful enough to influence envelope ejection.

Inclusion of jets is crucial for accurate modeling of red novae and planetary nebulae morphologies.

Abstract

I propose a scenario that allows white dwarfs (WDs) to launch relatively powerful jets when they enter a common envelope evolution (CEE) or experience a grazing envelope evolution (GEE) with a red giant branch star (RGB) or an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star. In this, still a speculative scenario, the accretion for a time is mainly onto an accretion disk with a radius of ~1Ro that increases in mass. The accretion disk launches the powerful two opposite jets by releasing gravitational energy, up to several times super-Eddington, as its mass increases. The jets launched by the disk remove high-entropy gas from its outskirts and the envelope that the WD inflates due to nuclear burning on its surface. The motivations to allow WDs to launch powerful jets are recent findings, from the morphologies of post-CEE planetary nebulae, that jets play a major role in the CEE and the accumulating evidence that jets power luminous red novae by jets, as their morphologies indicate. I strengthen my call to include jets in the simulation and modeling of the CEE, consider the GEE as a phase preceding the CEE in many (but not all) cases, and include jets as a major ingredient in modeling and simulating all energetic luminous red novae.