ATTENTION JOUR ET HEURE INHABITUELS
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) have been used as “standard candles”, which has led to the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. SNe Ia are also important producer of iron group elements in the Universe. It has been widely accepted that SNe Ia are thermonuclear explosions of mass accreting white dwarfs (WDs) in binary systems. However, the nature of the WD’s companion stars have not been clarified. Recent observations of some nearby SNe Ia and the remnants have found no indication of the companion stars (“missing companion problem”). I will show that the mass accreting WDs are inevitably rotating and their masses somewhat exceed the Chandrasekhar limit at the explosin, and how such super-Chandrasekhar mass model can solve the missing companion problem.
Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo, Japan