Weak-field limit of f (R) gravity to unify peculiar white dwarfs

In recent years, the idea of sub- and super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass white dwarfs (WDs), which are potential candidates to produce under- and over-luminous type Ia supernovae, respectively, has been a key interest in the scientific community. Although researchers have proposed different models to explain these peculiar objects, modified theories of Einstein's gravity, particularly f(R) gravity with R being the scalar curvature, seemto be one of the finest choices to explain both the regimes of these peculiar WDs. It was already shown that considering higher-order corrections to the Starobinsky model with two parameters, the structure of sub- and super-Chandrasekhar progenitor WDs can be explained self consistently. It is also well-known that WDs can be considered Newtonian objects because of their large size. In this paper, we derive the weak-field limit of f(R) gravity, which turns out to be the higher-order correction to the Poisson equation. Later, we use this equation to obtain the structures of suband super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass WDs at various central densities incorporating just one model parameter. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP(3).

Automated summary

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in studying the sub- and super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass white dwarfs, which are potential candidates to produce different types of supernovae. Modifying Einstein's gravity theory with f(R) gravity seems to be one of the best choices to explain these peculiar white dwarfs. This paper derives the weak-field limit of f(R) gravity and uses it to study the structures of sub- and super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass white dwarfs.