Hans-Thomas Janka

Explosion Mechanisms of Core-Collapse Supernovae

Supernova theory, numerical and analytic, has made remarkable progress in the past decade. This progress was made possible by more sophisticated simulation tools, especially for neutrino transport, improved microphysics, and deeper insights into the role of hydrodynamic instabilities. Violent, large-scale nonradial mass motions are generic in supernova cores. The neutrino-heating mechanism, aided by nonradial flows, drives explosions, albeit low-energy ones, of O-Ne-Mg-core and some Fe-core progenitors. The characteristics of the neutrino emission from newborn neutron stars were revised, new features of the gravitational-wave signals were discovered, our notion of supernova nucleosynthesis was shattered, and our understanding of pulsar kicks and explosion asymmetries was significantly improved. But simulations also suggest that neutrino-powered explosions might not explain the most energetic supernovae and hypernovae, which seem to demand magnetorotational driving. Now that modeling is being advanced from...

Improved models of stellar core collapse and still no explosions: what is missing?

Two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of stellar core collapse are presented which for the first time were performed by solving the Boltzmann equation for the neutrino transport including a state-of-the-art description of neutrino interactions. Stellar rotation is also taken into account. Although convection develops below the neutrinosphere and in the neutrino-heated region behind the supernova shock, the models do not explode. This suggests missing physics, possibly with respect to the nuclear equation of state and weak interactions in the subnuclear regime. However, it might also indicate a fundamental problem with the neutrino-driven explosion mechanism.

Multidimensional supernova simulations with approximative neutrino transport I. Neutron star kicks and the anisotropy of neutrino-driven explosions in two spatial dimensions

We study hydrodynamic instabilities during the first seconds of core-collapse supernovae by means of 2D simulations with approximative neutrino transport and boundary conditions that parameterize the effects of the contracting neutron star and allow us to obtain sufficiently strong neutrino heating and, hence, neutrino-driven explosions. Confirming more idealised studies, as well as supernova simulations with spectral transport, we find that random seed perturbations can grow by hydrodynamic instabilities to a globally asymmetric mass distribution in the region between the nascent neutron star and the accretion shock, leading to a dominance of dipole (

IS STRONG SASI ACTIVITY THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL NEUTRINO-DRIVEN SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS?

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Comprehensive nucleosynthesis analysis for ejecta of compact binary mergers

) and quadrupole (

A New Multi-dimensional General Relativistic Neutrino Hydrodynamics Code for Core-collapse Supernovae. II. Relativistic Explosion Models of Core-collapse Supernovae

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Nucleosynthesis in Early Supernova Winds II: The Role of Neutrinos

) modes in the explosion ejecta, provided the onset of the supernova explosion is sufficiently slower than the growth time scale of the low-mode instability. By gravitational and hydrodynamic forces, the anisotropic mass distribution causes an acceleration of the nascent neutron star, which lasts for several seconds and can propel the neutron star to velocities of more than 1000 km s -1 . Because the explosion anisotropies develop chaotically and change by small differences in the fluid flow, the magnitude of the kick varies stochastically. No systematic dependence of the average neutron star velocity on the explosion energy or the properties of the considered progenitors is found. Instead, the anisotropy of the mass ejection, and hence of the kick, seems to increase when the nascent neutron star contracts more quickly, and thus low-mode instabilities can grow more rapidly. Our more than 70 models separate into two groups, one with high and the other with low neutron star velocities and accelerations after one second of post-bounce evolution, depending on whether the

Core-collapse supernovae from 9 to 120 solar masses based on neutrino-powered explosions

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Electron-capture supernovae as the origin of elements beyond iron

mode is dominant in the ejecta or not. This leads to a bimodality of the distribution when the neutron star velocities are extrapolated to their terminal values. Establishing a link to the measured distribution of pulsar velocities, however, requires a much larger set of calculations and ultimately 3D modelling.

NEW TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODELS OF SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS BY THE NEUTRINO-HEATING MECHANISM: EVIDENCE FOR DIFFERENT INSTABILITY REGIMES IN COLLAPSING STELLAR CORES

Following a simulation approach of recent publications, we explore the viability of the neutrino-heating explosion mechanisms dependence on the spatial dimension. Our results disagree with previous findings. While we also observe that two-dimensional (2D) models explode for lower driving neutrino luminosity than spherically symmetric (1D) models, we do not find that explosions in 3D occur easier and earlier than in 2D. Moreover, we find that the average entropy of matter in the gain layer hardly depends on the dimension and thus is not a good diagnostic quantity for the readiness to explode. Instead, mass, integrated entropy, total neutrino-heating rate, and non-radial kinetic energy in the gain layer are higher when models are closer to explosion. Coherent, large-scale mass motions as typically associated with the standing accretion-shock instability (SASI) are observed to be supportive for explosions because they drive strong shock expansion and thus enlarge the gain layer. While 2D models with better angular resolution clearly explode more easily, the opposite trend is seen in 3D. We interpret this as a consequence of the turbulent energy cascade, which transports energy from small to large spatial scales in 2D, thus fostering SASI activity. In contrast, the energy flow in 3D is in the opposite direction, feeding fragmentation and vortex motions on smaller scales and thus making the 3D evolution with finer grid resolution more similar to 1D. More favorable conditions for explosions in 3D may therefore be tightly linked to efficient growth of low-order SASI modes including nonaxisymmetric ones.