Unveiling Physical Processes in Type Ia Supernovae with a Laue Lens Telescope

Details Unveiling Physical Processes in Type Ia Supernovae with a Laue Lens Telescope Unveiling Physical Processes in Type Ia Supernovae with a Laue Lens Telescope

Feb 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010head...11.4017b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #11, #40.17; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.723

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Scientific paper

Despite their use as standard candles in cosmological studies, many fundamental aspects of Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) remain uncertain, including the progenitor systems, the explosion trigger and the detailed nuclear burning physics. The most popular model involves an accreting CO white dwarf undergoing a thermonuclear runaway, converting a substantial fraction of the stellar mass to 56Ni. The radioactive decay chain 56Ni -> 56Co -> 56Fe powers both the SNIa optical light curve and produces several gamma-ray lines, including bright lines at 158 keV and 847 keV. Observations of the spectrum and light curve of any of these lines would be extremely valuable in constraining and discriminating between the currently competing models of SNIa.
However, these lines are weak in flux and evolve relatively quickly by gamma-ray standards: to be able to study a handful SNIa per year, the required sensitivity is about 10-6 ph/cm2/s at 847 keV and 10-7 ph/s/cm2 at 158 keV for 3% broadened lines, and these levels must be achieved in 105 s.
A Laue lens telescope offers a novel and powerful method of achieving these extremely challenging requirements. In this paper, we briefly introduce the Laue lens principle and state-of-the-art technologies, and we demonstrate how a space-borne telescope based on a Laue lens focusing on a Compton camera could bring about the long-awaited observational clues leading to a better understanding of SNIa physics.

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