2002/06/10 by Brad Hansen, Brad M. S. Hansen · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Black dwarf #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Massive compact halo object #Physics #Population #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Supernova #White dwarf #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/344782
published as Astrophys.J. 582 (2003) 915-918 · 12 pages, 2 postscript figures, submitted to ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2002/06/10 · openalex publication_date 2003/01/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
I examine the hypothesis that many of the high-velocity white dwarfs observed by Oppenheimer et al. are the remnants of donor stars from binaries that produced Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) via the "single degenerate" channel. If this channel is a significant contributor to the Galactic SN Ia rate, then the local density of such remnants with V ⊥ > 100 km s -1 could be as high as 2 × 10 -4 pc -3 , comparable to the densities found by Oppenheimer et al. This white dwarf population differs from others in that it is composed exclusively of single stars. It is also drawn from the thin disk and consequently contains more young stars than the older kinematically hot white dwarf populations. Thus, the determination of the binary fraction among high-velocity white dwarfs can distinguish this population from kinematically similar populations, such as the thick-disk white dwarfs.