One of the most important questions regarding the progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae ( SNe Ia ) is whether mergers of two white dwarfs can lead to explosions that reproduce observations of normal events .
Here we present a fully three-dimensional simulation of a violent merger of two carbon-oxygen white dwarfs with masses of 0.9 \mathrm { M _ { \odot } } and 1.1 \mathrm { M _ { \odot } } combining very high resolution and exact initial conditions .
A well-tested combination of codes is used to study the system .
We start with the dynamical inspiral phase and follow the subsequent thermonuclear explosion under the plausible assumption that a detonation forms in the process of merging .
We then perform detailed nucleosynthesis calculations and radiative transfer simulations to predict synthetic observables from the homologously expanding supernova ejecta .
We find that synthetic color lightcurves of our merger , which produces about 0.62 \mathrm { M _ { \odot } } of ^ { 56 } \mathrm { Ni } , show good agreement with those observed for normal SNe Ia in all wave bands from U to K. Line velocities in synthetic spectra around maximum light also agree well with observations .
We conclude , that violent mergers of massive white dwarfs can closely resemble normal SNe Ia .
Therefore , depending on the number of such massive systems available these mergers may contribute at least a small fraction to the observed population of normal SNe Ia .