Establish whether helium detonation develops and quantify its nucleosynthetic yields

Determine whether a helium detonation develops in eccentric white dwarf binaries encountering intermediate-mass black holes, using higher-resolution simulations with a nuclear reaction network, and quantify the resulting nucleosynthetic yields.

Background

The post-processing analysis finds He-origin material with sufficiently short triple-alpha heating timescales to be a candidate for dynamical helium burning, especially in the higher-mass-ratio systems. The simulations do not evolve nuclear reactions, and detonation depends on the presence of a sufficiently large, numerically resolved hotspot whose critical size varies with density and temperature. The authors therefore leave unresolved whether the identified burning conditions produce a helium detonation and what chemical products would result.