Logan Prust

From the calendar

Thermonuclear supernovae can be triggered by accretion onto one white dwarf from another via the “double detonation” mechanism. The subsequent collision between the supernova ejecta and donor may also ignite the donor, causing a “quadruple detonation” which results in the destruction of both objects. The destruction of the donor alters the structure of the supernova ejecta and enriches it with additional heavy elements, consequently altering the morphology and X-ray emission of the ejecta as it expands to become a supernova remnant over thousands of years. In this talk, I present a suite of hydrodynamical simulations of supernova remnants resulting from several detonation mechanisms and compare the results to the observational capabilities of the recently-launched X-ray telescope XRISM. We show that the dynamics of quadruple detonation remnants diverge from those of double detonations after several centuries, but are sensitive to the location at which the donor is ignited.