Exploding Supermassive White Dwarfs from the Nearby Supernova Factory
Richard Scalzo
(Yale)
Abstract:
Type Ia supernova (SNe Ia) have become popular in recent years as
luminosity distance indicators in cosmological experiments to study the
dark energy; however, the progenitor systems, explosion mechanisms, and
environments of these rare, luminous events are still poorly understood.
Most SNe Ia are believed to result from the thermonuclear explosion of a
single carbon-oxygen white dwarf, which accretes matter from a
non-degenerate binary companion star until it reaches the Chandrasekhar
limit (1.4 solar masses). I will present observations of an unusual SN
Ia, 2007if, from the Nearby Supernova Factory, a wide-area SN Ia search
and follow-up effort which ran from 2003 to 2008. The extreme brightness
of the SN and the low, slowly-changing expansion velocity of the Si II
6355 absorption feature suggest that SN 2007if was probably a merger of
two white dwarfs with a total mass of 2.4 +/- 0.2 solar masses, well in
excess of the Chandrasekhar limit and at the edge of practical limits
allowed by evolution of stellar systems resulting in binary white dwarfs.
SN 2007if is a member of an emerging subclass of overluminous SN Ia events
which are thought to have supermassive progenitors, and its properties
help to clarify the physical nature of the subclass. These SNe do not
obey the usual light curve relations for luminosity standardization, and
may be merely the most extreme representatives of a broader subclass of
events which must be standardized separately or excluded from cosmological
Hubble diagrams.