Revival of the Fittest: Exploding Core-Collapse Supernovae
Abstract
Massive stars at the end of their lifetimes undergo gravitational collapse and explode vigorously as core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), enriching the interstellar medium and sourcing many of the heavy elements in the universe. In addition to hosting nucleosynthesis, these explosions revitalize ambient star formation, birth neutron stars, and produce gravitational waves. Yet the nature of successfully powering CCSNe, transforming stellar collapse to stellar explosion, has endured as a scientific mystery for over half a century. The favored mechanism for driving explosion is neutrino heating, wherein some small fraction of the neutrino energy is absorbed to revive the explosion. I employ FORNAX, a state-of-the-art hydrodynamics and radiative transfer code, to study this tenuously understood mechanism. In a series of recent multi-dimensional simulations, I explore the sensitive dependence of the outcome - explosion or dud - on the progenitor star structure, neutrino-matter microphysics, and macrophysical properties (e.g., rotation and velocity perturbations). I produce the first cutting-edge, full three-dimensional simulation of a CCSN progenitor, and find that our model explodes vigorously within 100 milliseconds and is estimated to accumulate energy at a rate of 0.5 Bethe (10^51 erg) over 2 seconds. Because CCSNe produce gravitational waves and neutrinos in the first seconds of evolution, our results inform the study of these multi-messenger observational signatures as probes of the progenitor star and its explosion dynamics. Until recently, the field lacked high fidelity simulations that not only produced explosions, but produced robust explosions. Our work brings the field one step closer to this goal.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23311304V