Evaluating Systematic Dependencies of Type Ia Supernovae: The Influence of Deflagration to Detonation Density
Abstract
We explore the effects of the deflagration to detonation transition density on the production of 56Ni in thermonuclear supernova explosions (type Ia supernovae). The transition density indirectly sets the amount of expansion during the deflagration phase of the explosion and therefore the amount of Fe-group material produced. A fraction of the Fe-group material will be radioactive 56Ni that powers the supernova lightcurve. We employ a theoretical framework for a well-controlled statistical study of two-dimensional simulations of thermonuclear supernovae with randomized initial conditions that produce 56Ni masses with a similar average and range to those inferred from observations (Townsley et al. 2009) for a fiducial transition density of 107 g cm-3. Within this framework, we utilize a realistic 'simmered' white dwarf progenitor model and a detailed flame model and energetics scheme to calculate the amount of Fe-group material synthesized for a suite of simulated explosions in which the transition density is varied. Understanding the effect of transition density on the amount of Fe-group material produced in combination with the effect of 22Ne (and metallicity) on transition density allows us to construct the functional dependence of the amount of Fe-group material and 56Ni mass synthesized in the explosion on metallicity through the 22Ne content.
This work was supported by NASA under grant No. NNX09AD19G and utilized resources at the New York Center for Computational Sciences at Stony Brook University/Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 and by the State of New York.- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #215
- Pub Date:
- January 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AAS...21543025J