Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 882, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab321f
Keywords
gravitation; stars: evolution; stars: kinematics and dynamics; supernovae: general
Categories
Funding
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Simons Foundation Fellowship
- IBM Einstein Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study
- NSF [1313252]
- Scialog Scholar grant from the Research Corporation [24216]
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences [1313252] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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SNe Ia could arise from mergers of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (WDs) triggered by Lidov-Kozai (LK) oscillations in hierarchical triple-star systems. However, predicted merger rates are several orders of magnitude lower than the observed SNe Ia rate. The low predicted rates can be attributed in part to the fact that many potential WD-merger progenitor systems, with high mutual orbital inclination, merge or interact before the WD stage. Recently, evidence was found for the existence of natal kicks imparted on WDs with a typical magnitude of 0.75 km s(-1) . In triples, kicks change the mutual inclination and in general increase the outer orbit eccentricity, bringing the triple into an active LK regime at late stages and avoiding the issue of pre-WD merger or interaction. Stars passing by the triple can result in similar effects. However, both processes can also disrupt the triple. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the impact of WD kicks and flybys on the rate of WD mergers using detailed simulations. We find that WD kicks and flybys combine to increase the predicted WD merger rates by a factor of similar to 2.5, resulting in a time-integrated rate of approximate to 1.1 x 10(-4) M-circle dot(-1). Despite the significant boost, the predicted rates are still more than one order of magnitude below the observed rate of similar to 10(-3) M-circle dot(-1) . However, many systematic uncertainties still remain in our calculations, in particular the potential contributions from tighter triples, dynamically unstable systems, unbound systems due to WD kicks, and quadruple systems.
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