The origin of intermediate helium (He)-rich hot subdwarfs are still unclear.
Previous studies have suggested that some surviving Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia)
companions from the white dwarf~+~main-sequence (WD+MS) channel may contribute
to the intermediate He-rich hot subdwarfs. However, previous studies ignored
the impact of atomic diffusion on the post-explosion evolution of surviving
companion stars of SNe Ia, leading to that they could not explain the observed
surface He abundance of intermediate He-rich hot subdwarfs. In this work, by
taking the atomic diffusion and stellar wind into account, we trace the
surviving companions of SNe Ia from the WD+MS channel using the one-dimensional
stellar evolution code \textsc{MESA} until they evolve into hot subdwarfs. We
find that the surface He-abundances of our surviving companion models during
their core He-burning phases are in a range of β1β²log(NHeβ/NHβ)β²0, which are consistent with those observed in
intermediate He-rich hot subdwarfs. This seems to further support that
surviving companions of SNe Ia in the WD+MS channel are possible to form some
intermediate He-rich hot subdwarfs.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure