Abundances and Transients from Neutron Star-White Dwarf Mergers

Understand

We systematically investigate the mergers of neutron star-white dwarf binaries from beginning to end, with focus on the properties of the inflows and outflows in accretion disks and their electromagnetic emissions.

• Using population synthesis models, we determine a subset of these binaries in which the white dwarf companion undergoes unstable mass transfer and complete tidal disruption, forming a large accretion disk around the neutron star.
• The material evolves according to an advection-dominated accretion disk model with nuclear burning, neutrino-emissions, and disk-surface wind ejection.
• The extreme dynamics of the entire process has proven difficult for analytic analysis, and thus currently the properties are poorly understood.