The viability of the optically thick wind model in accreting white dwarfs at high accretion rates

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2022-08, Vol.515 (2), p.2747-2754
• Main Authors: Cui, Yingzhen, Meng, Xiangcun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1966

The single degenerate (SD) model is one of the leading models for the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). The optically thick wind (OTW) model is considered to be essential for the SD model. In this article, we aim to constrain the condition for the occurrence of the OTW. Using the stellar evolution code, Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics, we carried out a series of one-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations with different accretion rates and different white dwarf (WD) masses to simulate the dynamical ejection process on the accreting WDs. We find that, by neglecting interaction with the accreted material, we can get a similar result to the previous works using steady-state method, i.e. the OTW occurs. However, if we consider the interaction between the accreted and the outflowing materials, whether the OTW can occur or not becomes strongly dependent on the accretion rate. For a given WD mass, the higher the accretion rate, the less likely the OTW can occur. In addition, the WD masses can also affect the occurrence of the OTW, i.e. the higher the WD mass, the easier the OTW can occur. As a result, the OTW in novae may occur because the accretion rate is low enough, while in the SD progenitor system of SNe Ia, a high accretion rate is likely to prevent the occurrence of the OTW.