A POSSIBLE EVOLUTIONARY SCENARIO OF HIGHLY MAGNETIZED SUPER-CHANDRASEKHAR WHITE DWARFS: PROGENITORS OF PECULIAR TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE

Several recently discovered peculiar Type Ia supernovae seem to demand an altogether new formation theory that might help explain the puzzling dissimilarities between them and the standard Type Ia supernovae. The most striking aspect of the observational analysis is the necessity of invoking super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs having masses similar to 2.1-2.8 M-circle dot, M-circle dot being the mass of Sun, as their most probable progenitors. Strongly magnetized white dwarfs having super-Chandrasekhar masses have already been established as potential candidates for the progenitors of peculiar Type Ia supernovae. Owing to the Landau quantization of the underlying electron degenerate gas, theoretical results yielded the observationally inferred mass range. Here, we sketch a possible evolutionary scenario by which super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs could be formed by accretion on to a commonly observed magnetized white dwarf, invoking the phenomenon of flux freezing. This opens multiple possible evolution scenarios ending in supernova explosions of super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs having masses within the range stated above. We point out that our proposal has observational support, such as the recent discovery of a large number of magnetized white dwarfs by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.