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Published April 20, 2017 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

A Hubble Space Telescope Survey for Novae in M87. II. Snuffing out the Maximum Magnitude–Rate of Decline Relation for Novae as a Non-standard Candle, and a Prediction of the Existence of Ultrafast Novae

Abstract

The extensive grid of numerical simulations of nova eruptions from the work of Yaron et al. first predicted that some classical novae might significantly deviate from the Maximum Magnitude–Rate of Decline (MMRD) relation, which purports to characterize novae as standard candles. Kasliwal et al. have announced the observational detection of a new class of faint, fast classical novae in the Andromeda galaxy. These objects deviate strongly from the MMRD relationship, as predicted by Yaron et al. Recently, Shara et al. reported the first detections of faint, fast novae in M87. These previously overlooked objects are as common in the giant elliptical galaxy M87 as they are in the giant spiral M31; they comprise about 40% of all classical nova eruptions and greatly increase the observational scatter in the MMRD relation. We use the extensive grid of the nova simulations of Yaron et al. to identify the underlying causes of the existence of faint, fast novae. These are systems that have accreted, and can thus eject, only very low-mass envelopes, of the order of 10^(−7)–10^(−8) M_⊙, on massive white dwarfs. Such binaries include, but are not limited to, the recurrent novae. These same models predict the existence of ultrafast novae that display decline times, t_2, to be as short as five hours. We outline a strategy for their future detection.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Astronomical Society. Received 2015 December 24. Accepted 2016 May 1. Published 2017 April 21. We are grateful to A. Juodagalvis for providing the data of electron capture rates on heavy nuclei. H.N. acknowledges to M. Shibata, Y. Sekiguchi and H. Okawa for valuable comments and discussions. H.N. also thanks Werner Marcus for proofreadings. The numerical computations were performed on the supercomputers at K, at AICS, FX10 at Information Technology Center of Tokyo University, SR16000 at YITP of Kyoto University, and SR16000 at KEK under the support of its Large Scale Simulation Program (14/15-17, 15/16-08), Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) at Osaka University. Large-scale storage of numerical data is supported by JLDG constructed over SINET4 of NII. H.N. was supported in part by JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research Abroad No. 27-348. This work was also supported by Grant-in-Aid for the Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan (15K05093, 24103006, 24740165, 24244036, 25870099) and HPCI Strategic Program of Japanese MEXT and K computer at the RIKEN (Project ID: hpci 130025, 140211, and 150225).

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Published - Shara_2017_ApJ_839_109.pdf

Submitted - 1702.05788.pdf

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August 21, 2023
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