The physics of Chandrasekhar and Super-Chandrasekhar White Dwarfs

Abstract

We consider white dwarfs to be composed by a degenerate electron gas at zero temperature and study the underlying physics. The electron pressure can only balance the gravitational force up to a maximum mass of the white dwarf, the so-called Chandrasekhar mass. By writing our own code, we have found the value of this limiting mass to be 1.417 solar masses, in accordance with most observations. However, recent discoveries of overluminous type Ia supernovae explosions suggest white dwarf masses above the Chandrasekhar limit. Motivated by recent literature, we show in this work that the presence of an intense magnetic field in the star leads to a higher value of the maximum mass, which could explain these new observations.