http://arxiv.org/abs/1912.00900
One of the most celebrated discoveries of twentieth century is the existence of limiting mass of white dwarfs, which is one of the compact objects formed once nuclear burning stops inside the star. On approaching this limiting mass $\sim1.4M_\odot$, called the Chandrasekhar mass-limit, 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 of 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 Heisenberg’s 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.
S. Kalita, B. Mukhopadhyay and T. Govindarajan
Tue, 3 Dec 19
59/90
Comments: 9 pages including 1 figure; comments welcome. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1908.11206 by other authors
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