The Coalescence of White Dwarfs And Type I Supernovae

Abstract

In the context of the white dwarf coalescence model for type la supernovae, we compute post-coalescence configurations involving a thick disk, rotating around a central white dwarf (the original primary), having the same total mass, angular momentum and energy as the initial system. We show that carbon ignition in rather low density material (10 5 – 10 ° g.cm −3 ) can be triggered during the merging process itself or later, by dissipation due to turbulence in the disk. The evolution of the object following carbon ignition is very uncertain.