Transients from ONe white dwarf - neutron star/black hole mergers

We conduct the first 3D hydrodynamic simulations of oxygen-neon white dwarf-neutron star/black hole mergers (ONe WDNS/BH mergers). Such mergers constitute a significant fraction, and may even dominate, the inspiral rates of all WD-NS binaries. We post-process our simulations to obtain the nuclear evolution of these systems and couple the results to a supernova spectral synthesis code to obtain the first light curves and spectra for these transients. We find that the amount of Ni-56 synthesized in these mergers grows as a strong function of the WD mass, reaching typically 0.05 and up to 0.1 M-circle dot per merger. Photodisintegration leads to similar amounts of He-4 and about a ten times smaller amount of H-1. The nuclear yields from these mergers, in particular those of Mn-55, may contribute significantly to Galactic chemical evolution. The transients expected from ONe WD-NS mergers are dominantly red/infrared, evolve on month-long time-scales and reach bolometric magnitudes of up to -16.5. The current surveys must have already detected these transients or are, alternatively, putting strong constraints on merger scenarios. The properties of the expected transients from WD-NS mergers best agree with faint type Lax supernovae. The Vera Rubin Observatory (LSST) will be detecting up to thousands of merging ONe WD-NS systems per year. We simulate a subset of our models with 2D axisymmetric FLASH code to investigate why they have been challenging for previous studies. We find that the likely main challenge has been effectively modelling the nuclear statistical equilibrium regime in such mergers.

Automated summary

We conducted the first 3D hydrodynamic simulations of oxygen-neon white dwarf-neutron star/black hole mergers (ONe WDNS/BH mergers). We obtained the nuclear evolution, light curves, and spectra for these systems through post-processing and coupling with a supernova spectral synthesis code. Our results show that the amount of Ni-56 synthesized in these mergers strongly depends on the white dwarf mass, and the nuclear yields may contribute significantly to Galactic chemical evolution. The expected transients from WD-NS mergers are predominantly red/infrared and have a month-long evolution timescale.