http://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07569

We suggest that fast-rising blue optical transients (FBOTs), and the brightest event of the class AT2018cow, result from electron-capture collapse following a merger of a massive ONeMg white dwarf (WD) with another WD. Two distinct evolutionary channels lead to the disruption of the less massive WD during the merger and formation of a shell burning non-degenerate star. During the shell burning stage a large fraction of the envelope is lost to the wind, while mass and angular momentum are added to the core. As a result, the electron-capture collapse occurs with a small envelope mass, after $\sim 10^2-10^4$ years. During the formation of a neutron star (NS) as little as $\sim 10^{-2} M_\odot $ of the material is ejected at the bounce-off with mildly relativistic velocities and total energy $\sim$ few $ 10^{50}$ ergs. This ejecta becomes optically thin on time scales of days – this is the FBOT. During the collapse the NS is spun up and magnetic field is amplified. The ensuing fast magnetically-dominated relativistic wind from the newly formed NS shocks against the ejecta, and later against the wind. The radiation-dominated forward shock produces the long-lasting optical afterglow, while the termination shock of the relativistic wind produces the high energy emission in a Pulsar Wind Nebulae-like manner. If the secondary WD was of the DA type – the most frequent – the wind will have hydrogen, of the order of $10^{-4} M_\odot$: this explains appearance of hydrogen late in the afterglow spectrum. The model explains many of the puzzling properties of FBOTs/AT2018cow: host galaxies, fast and light anisotropic ejecta producing bright optical peak, afterglow with high energy emission of similar luminosity to optical, hard X-ray and infra-red features, presence of dense wind environment, late powerful radio emission.

Read this paper on arXiv…

M. Lyutikov and S. Toonen
Thu, 20 Dec 18
59/62

Comments: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1709.02221