No Arabic abstract
Chandrasekhar made the startling discovery about nine decades back that the mass of compact object white dwarf has a limiting value, once nuclear fusion reactions stop therein. This is the Chandrasekhar mass-limit, which is $sim1.4M_odot$ for a non-rotating non-magnetized white dwarf. On approaching this limiting mass, a white dwarf is believed to spark off with an explosion called type Ia supernova, which is considered to be a standard candle. However, observations of several over-luminous, peculiar type Ia supernovae indicate that the Chandrasekhar mass-limit to be significantly larger. By considering noncommutativity among the components of position and momentum variables, hence uncertainty in their measurements, at the quantum scales, we show that the mass of white dwarfs could be significantly super-Chandrasekhar and thereby arrive at a new mass-limit $sim 2.6M_odot$, explaining a possible origin of over-luminous peculiar type Ia supernovae. The idea of noncommutativity, apart from the Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, is there for quite sometime, without any observational proof however. Our finding offers a plausible astrophysical evidence of noncommutativity, arguing for a possible second standard candle, which has many far-reaching implications.
The indirect evidence for at least a dozen massive white dwarfs violating the Chandrasekhar mass-limit is considered to be one of the wonderful discoveries in astronomy for more than a decade. Researchers have already proposed a diverse amount of models to explain this astounding phenomenon. However, each of these models always carries some drawbacks. On the other hand, noncommutative geometry is one of the best replicas of quantum gravity, which is yet to be proved from observations. Madore introduced the idea of a fuzzy sphere to describe a formalism of noncommutative geometry. This article shows that the idea of a squashed fuzzy sphere can self-consistently explain the super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass white dwarfs. We further show that the length-scale beyond which the noncommutativity is prominent is an emergent phenomenon, and there is no prerequisite for an ad-hoc length-scale.
Since 2012, we have initiated a new idea showing that the mass of highly magnetized or modified Einsteins gravity induced white dwarfs could be significantly super-Chandrasekhar with a different mass-limit. This discovery has several important consequences, including explanation of peculiar, over-luminous type Ia supernovae, soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars without invoking extraordinarily strong, yet unobserved, magnetic fields. It further argues for a possible second standard candle. Based on simpler calculations, these white dwarfs are also shown to be much less luminous than their standard counter-parts (of low magnetic fields). This discovery altogether initiates a new field of research.
Type Ia supernovae (SNeIa), used as one of the standard candles in astrophysics, are believed to form when the mass of the white dwarf approaches Chandrasekhar mass limit. However, observations in last few decades detected some peculiar SNeIa, which are predicted to be originating from white dwarfs of mass much less than the Chandrasekhar mass limit or much higher than it. Although the unification of these two sub-classes of SNeIa was attempted earlier by our group, in this work, we, for the first time, explain this phenomenon in terms of just one property of the white dwarf which is its central density. Thereby we do not vary the fundamental parameters of the underlying gravity model in the contrary to the earlier attempt. We effectively consider higher order corrections to the Starobinsky-$f(R)$ gravity model to reveal the unification. We show that the limiting mass of a white dwarf is $sim M_odot$ for central density $rho_c sim 1.4times10^8$ g/cc, while it is $sim 2.8M_odot$ for $rho_c sim1.6times 10^{10}$ g/cc under the same model parameters. We further confirm that these models are viable with respect to the solar system test. This perhaps enlightens very strongly the long standing puzzle lying with the predicted variation of progenitor mass in SNeIa.
The idea of possible modification to gravity theory, whether it is in the Newtonian or general relativistic premises, is there for quite sometime. Based on it, astrophysical and cosmological problems are targeted to solve. But none of the Newtonian theories of modification has been performed from the first principle. Here, we modify Poissons equation and propose two possible ways to modify the law gravitation which, however, reduces to Newtons law far away from the center of source. Based on these modified Newtons laws, we attempt to solve problems lying with white dwarfs. There are observational evidences for possible violation of the Chandrasekhar mass-limit significantly: it could be sub- as well as super-Chandrasekhar. We show that modified Newtons law, either by modifying LHS or RHS of Poissons equation, can explain them.
Over the past couple of decades, researchers have predicted more than a dozen super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs from the detections of over-luminous type Ia supernovae. It turns out that magnetic fields and rotation can explain such massive white dwarfs. If these rotating magnetized white dwarfs follow specific conditions, they can efficiently emit continuous gravitational waves and various futuristic detectors, viz. LISA, BBO, DECIGO, and ALIA can detect such gravitational waves with a significant signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, we discuss various timescales over which these white dwarfs can emit dipole and quadrupole radiations and show that in the future, the gravitational wave detectors can directly detect the super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs depending on the magnetic field geometry and its strength.