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The Chemical Composition of the White Dwarfs in Cataclysmic Variable Systems which Produce Novae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Warren M. Sparks
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sumner G. Starrfield
Affiliation:
Arizona State Universityand Los Alamos National Laboratory
James W. Truran
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
G. Siegfried Kutter
Affiliation:
Lab for Astronomy and Solar Physics, NASA/GSFC

Extract

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Recently a number of studies have been published on the nuclear abundance of nova ejecta, as summarized by Truran and Livio (1986). H is always underabundant (compared to solar) and He is overabundant except for the cases where the heavier elements are far overabundant. The abundances of C, N, and O range from nearly solar to highly overabundant. A few novae are very rich in Ne and Mg as well as O, which has led to the discovery that these novae occur on O/Ne/Mg white dwarfs (Williams, et al., 1985). We will assume that the abundances are an accurate and consistently determined set of data for our purposes. The nova ejecta is a combination of original white dwarf material, remnant material, remaining on the white dwarf from the previous outburst, and accreted material, all of which has undergone thermonuclear processing during the outburst. The question we address here is “Can we untangle the observational abundances to determine the contributions of each source?” A positive answer would allow us to tell whether the white dwarf’s mass is increasing or decreasing and thus have implications on the accreting white dwarf model for a SNI.

Type
Part III. Chemical and Dynamical Structures of Exploding Stars
Copyright
Copyright © Springer-Verlag 1988

References

Bibliography:

Starrfield, S., Sparks, W.M., and Truran, J.W. 1985, Ap. J., 291, 136.Google Scholar
Truran, J.W., and Livio, M. 1986, Ap. J., 308, 721.Google Scholar
Williams, R.E., Sparks, W.M., Starrfield, S., Ney, E.P., Truran, J.W. and Wyckoff, S., 1985, M.N.R.A.S., 212, 753.Google Scholar