Accreting He-rich material onto carbon-oxygen white dwarfs until explosive carbon ignition

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play an important role in studies of cosmology and galactic chemical evolution. They are believed to be thermonuclear explosions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO Wds) when their masses approach the Chandrasekar (Ch) mass limit. However, it is still not completely understood how a CO WD increases its mass to the Ch-mass limit in the classical single-degenerate (SD) model. In this paper, we studied the mass accretion process in the SD model to examine whether the WD can explode as an SN Ia. Employing the stellar evolution code called modules for experiments in stellar astrophysics (MESA), we simulated the He accretion process onto CO WDs. We found that the WD can increase its mass to the Ch-mass limit through the SD model and explosive carbon ignition finally occurs in its center, which will lead to an SN Ia explosion. Our results imply that SNe Ia can be produced from the SD model through steady helium accretion. Moreover, this work can provide initial input parameters for explosion models of SNe Ia.