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Evidence for sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia supernovae from the last major merger

Sanders, JL; Belokurov, V; Man, KTF; (2021) Evidence for sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia supernovae from the last major merger. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 506 (3) pp. 4321-4343. 10.1093/mnras/stab1951. Green open access

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Abstract

We investigate the contribution of sub-Chandrasekhar mass Type Ia supernovae to the chemical enrichment of the Gaia Sausage galaxy, the progenitor of a significant merger event in the early life of the Milky Way. Using a combination of data from Nissen & Schuster (2010), the 3rd GALAH data release (with 1D NLTE abundance corrections) and APOGEE data release 16, we fit analytic chemical evolution models to a 9-dimensional chemical abundance space (Fe, Mg, Si, Ca, Cr, Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn) in particular focusing on the iron-peak elements, Mn and Ni. We find that low [Mn/Fe] $\sim-0.15\,\mathrm{dex}$ and low [Ni/Fe] $\sim-0.3\,\mathrm{dex}$ Type Ia yields are required to explain the observed trends beyond the [$\alpha$/Fe] knee of the Gaia Sausage (approximately at [Fe/H] $=-1.4\,\mathrm{dex}$). Comparison to theoretical yield calculations indicate a significant contribution from sub-Chandrasekhar mass Type Ia supernovae in this system (from $\sim60$% to $100$% depending on the theoretical model with an additional $\pm10$% systematic from NLTE corrections). We compare to results from other Local Group environments including dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way's bulge, finding the Type Ia [Mn/Fe] yield must be metallicity-dependent. Our results suggest that sub-Chandrasekhar mass channels are a significant, perhaps even dominant, contribution to Type Ia supernovae in metal-poor systems, whilst more metal-rich systems could be explained by metallicity-dependent sub-Chandrasekhar mass yields, possibly with additional progenitor mass variation related to star formation history, or an increased contribution from Chandrasekhar mass channels at higher metallicity.

Type: Article
Title: Evidence for sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia supernovae from the last major merger
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab1951
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1951
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances, supernovae: general, Galaxy: abundances, Galaxy: evolution
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10134126
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