Existence of Chandrasekhar’s limit in generalized uncertainty white dwarfs

Abstract

The existence of Chandrasekhar’s limit has played various decisive roles in astronomical observations for many decades. However, various recent theoretical investigations suggest that gravitational collapse of white dwarfs is withheld for arbitrarily high masses beyond Chandrasekhar’s limit if the equation of state incorporates the effect of quantum gravity via the generalized uncertainty principle. There have been a few attempts to restore the Chandrasekhar limit but they are found to be inadequate. In this paper, we rigorously resolve this problem by analysing the dynamical instability in general relativity. We confirm the existence of Chandrasekhar’s limit as well as stable mass–radius curves that behave consistently with astronomical observations. Moreover, this stability analysis suggests gravitational collapse beyond the Chandrasekhar limit signifying the possibility of compact objects denser than white dwarfs.

Keywords

• white dwarf
• Chandrasekhar limit
• generalized uncertainty principle
• dynamical instability
• gravitational collapse