The Evolution of Hypervelocity Supernova Survivors and the Outcomes of Interacting Double White Dwarf Binaries

Abstract

The recent prediction and discovery of hypervelocity supernova survivors has provided strong evidence that the “dynamically driven double-degenerate double-detonation” (D ^6 ) Type Ia supernova scenario occurs in nature. In this model, the accretion stream from the secondary white dwarf (WD) in a double WD binary strikes the primary WD violently enough to trigger a helium shell detonation, which in turn triggers a carbon/oxygen core detonation. If the secondary WD survives the primary’s explosion, it will be flung away as a hypervelocity star. While previous work has shown that the hotter observed D ^6 stars can be broadly understood as secondaries whose outer layers have been heated by their primaries’ explosions, the properties of the cooler D ^6 stars have proven difficult to reproduce. In this paper, we show that the cool D ^6 stars can be explained by the Kelvin–Helmholtz contraction of helium or carbon/oxygen WDs that underwent significant mass loss and core heating prior to and during the explosion of their WD companions. We find that the current population of known D ^6 candidates is consistent with ∼2% of Type Ia supernovae leaving behind a hypervelocity surviving companion. We also calculate the evolution of hot, low-mass oxygen/neon stars and find reasonable agreement with the properties of the LP 40–365 class of hypervelocity survivors, suggesting that these stars are the kicked remnants of near-Chandrasekhar-mass oxygen/neon WDs that were partially disrupted by oxygen deflagrations. We use these results as motivation for schematic diagrams showing speculative outcomes of interacting double WD binaries, including long-lived merger remnants, Type Ia supernovae, and several kinds of peculiar transients.

Keywords

• Supernovae
• White dwarf stars
• Hypervelocity stars