The Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae with Asymptotic Giant Branch Donors

Abstract

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are among the most energetic events in the Universe. They are excellent cosmological distance indicators due to the remarkable homogeneity of their light curves. However, the nature of the progenitors of SNe Ia is still not well understood. In the single-degenerate model, a carbon-oxygen white dwarf (CO WD) could grow its mass by accreting material from an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star, leading to the formation of SNe Ia when the mass of WD approaches to the Chandrasekhar-mass limit, known as the AGB donor channel. In this channel, previous studies mainly concentrate on the wind-accretion pathway for the mass-increase of the WDs. In the present work, we employed an integrated mass-transfer prescription for semidetached WD+AGB systems, and evolved a number of WD+AGB systems to the formation of SNe Ia through the Roche-lobe overflow process or the wind-accretion process. We provided the initial and final parameter spaces of WD+AGB systems for producing SNe Ia. We also provided the density distribution of circumstellar matter at the moment when the WD mass reaches the Chandrasekhar-mass limit. Moreover, we found that the massive WD+AGB sample AT 2019qyl can be covered by our final parameter space for producing SNe Ia, indicating that AT 2019qyl is a strong progenitor candidate of SNe Ia with AGB donors.

On the Surface Helium Abundance of B-type Hot Subdwarf Stars from the WD+MS Channel of Type Ia Supernovae

“…Thus, the progenitor models of SNe Ia are primarily separated into the single-degenerate (SD) model and the doubledegenerate (DD) model based on the different sorts of companions (Whelan & Iben 1973;Nomoto 1982;Iben & Tutukov 1984;Webbink 1984). The non-degenerate companion star in the SD model could be a main-sequence star (i.e., the WD+MS channel), a sub-giant, a red giant star (i.e., the WD+RG channel), an asymptotic giant branch star (i.e., the WD+AGB channel), or a helium star (i.e., the WD +He star channel) (Whelan & Iben 1973;Nomoto et al 1984;Wang et al 2009;Wang & Han 2012;Li et al 2023). The binary system in the DD model is made up of two CO WDs (Han 1998;Liu et al 2018).…”