Neon Novae, Recurrent Novae, and Type I Supernovae

Abstract

Over the past few years, we have been investigating the effects of accretion onto massive white dwarfs and its implications for their growth in mass toward the Chandrasekhar limit, in attempts to identify a possible relationship between SN I and novae. In our studies we have considered accretion at various mass accretion rates onto a variety of different white dwarf masses. We have found that there is a critical white dwarf mass above which a significant fraction of the accreted mass can remain on the white dwarf after the outburst. Below this value of the white dwarf mass, all of the accreted mass, plus core material dredged up into the envelope, is ejected as a result of the explosion. Our latest results include accretion and boundary layer heating produced by the infalling material. From these studies, we have identified some members of the class of recurrent novae, those involving a thermonuclear runaway, as the novae that are occurring on very massive white dwarfs and evolving toward a SN I explosion. One of the outgrowths of our UV studies of novae in outburst has been the identification of a class of novae which eject material that is very rich in the elements from oxygen to aluminum. We have shown that these outbursts occur on ONeMg white dwarfs, which are necessarily very massive white dwarfs.