Dark matter ignition of type Ia supernovae

Understand

Recent studies of low redshift type Ia supernovae (SNIa) indicate that half explode from less than Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs, implying ignition must proceed from something besides the canonical criticality of Chandrasekhar mass SNIa progenitors.

• We show that $1-100$ PeV mass asymmetric dark matter, with imminently detectable nucleon scattering interactions, can accumulate to the point of self-gravitation in a white dwarf and collapse, shedding gravitational potential energy by scattering off nuclei, thereby heating the white dwarf and igniting the flame front that precedes SNIa.
• We combine data on SNIa masses with data on the ages of SNIa-adjacent stars.
• This combination reveals a $2.8 \sigma$ inverse correlation between SNIa masses and ignition ages, which could result from increased capture of dark matter in 1.4 versus 1.1 solar mass white dwarfs.