Recent investigations on the delay time of type Ia supernovae have set useful constraints on the progenitors of type Ia supernovae. Here we have calculated the evolution of close binaries consisting of a white dwarf and a main-sequence or subgiant companion. We assume that, once Roche lobe overflow occurs a small fraction of the lost mass from the system forms a circumbinary disk, which extracts the orbital angular momentum from the system through tidal torques. Our calculations indicate that...
Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702218v1