The Impact of White Dwarf Natal Kicks and Stellar Flybys on the Rates of Type Ia Supernovae in Triple-star Systems

Abstract

Abstract SNe Ia could arise from mergers of carbon–oxygen white dwarfs (WDs) triggered by Lidov–Kozai (LK) oscillations in hierarchical triple-star systems. However, predicted merger rates are several orders of magnitude lower than the observed SNe Ia rate. The low predicted rates can be attributed in part to the fact that many potential WD-merger progenitor systems, with high mutual orbital inclination, merge or interact before the WD stage. Recently, evidence was found for the existence of natal kicks imparted on WDs with a typical magnitude of 0.75 km s−1. In triples, kicks change the mutual inclination and in general increase the outer orbit eccentricity, bringing the triple into an active LK regime at late stages and avoiding the issue of pre-WD merger or interaction. Stars passing by the triple can result in similar effects. However, both processes can also disrupt the triple. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the impact of WD kicks and flybys on the rate of WD mergers using detailed simulations. We find that WD kicks and flybys combine to increase the predicted WD merger rates by a factor of ∼2.5, resulting in a time-integrated rate of ≈1.1 × 10−4 M ⊙ −1. Despite the significant boost, the predicted rates are still more than one order of magnitude below the observed rate of ∼10−3 M ⊙ −1. However, many systematic uncertainties still remain in our calculations, in particular the potential contributions from tighter triples, dynamically unstable systems, unbound systems due to WD kicks, and quadruple systems.