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Session: Stars, Planets and the Interstellar Medium

Name: Mr. Savvas Chanlaridis (IA-FORTH & Univ. of Crete)
Coauthors: No coauthors were included.
Type: Oral
Title: Thermonuclear and Electron-Capture Supernovae from Stripped-Envelope Stars
Abstract:

Neutron stars (NSs) are the compact remnants of massive stars formed in supernova explosions. Their properties depend sensitively on the properties of fundamental physical laws, the evolution of their progenitors, and the physical characteristics of the explosion. In our group we focus on novel numerical modelling to study the formation, evolution, and properties of NSs originating from a so-called electron-capture supernova (ECSN). The latter are produced when intermediate-mass stars with degenerate oxygen-neon (ONe) cores explode. Due to the properties of the explosion, ECSN are thought to produce low-mass/low-velocity NSs, which are crucial for explaining the formation of gravitational-wave sources, such as those recently seen by Advanced LIGO and Virgo. In this talk, I will try to illuminate the thus-far illusive stellar mass limits that separate white dwarfs, thermonuclear explosions, and NSs by investigating how sensitive these transition masses are to input physics uncertainties, for instance, composition, convective overshooting, mass-loss rate, and binary interactions. To this end, I will focus on a novel and seemingly universal mechanism, identified by our group, that allows ONe cores to disrupt in thermonuclear explosions instead of producing ECSN. This mechanism may result in a significant paradigm shift, as it produces explosions that are observationally similar to Type Ia supernovae (SNe-Ia), and it suppresses NS formation with consequences on their observed mass distribution.