Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Details Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

2004-01-13

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401247v1

Astrophys.J. 608 (2004) 883-906

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

submitted to ApJ, some figures degraded due to size constraints

Scientific paper

10.1086/420841

A Type Ia supernova explosion likely begins as a nuclear runaway near the center of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf. The outward propagating flame is unstable to the Landau-Darrieus, Rayleigh-Taylor, and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, which serve to accelerate it to a large fraction of the speed of sound. We investigate the Rayleigh-Taylor unstable flame at the transition from the flamelet regime to the distributed-burning regime, around densities of $10^7$ g/cc, through detailed, fully resolved simulations. A low Mach number, adaptive mesh hydrodynamics code is used to achieve the necessary resolution and long time scales. As the density is varied, we see a fundamental change in the character of the burning--at the low end of the density range the Rayleigh-Taylor instability dominates the burning, whereas at the high end the burning suppresses the instability. In all cases, significant acceleration of the flame is observed, limited only by the size of the domain we are able to study. We discuss the implications of these results on the potential for a deflagration to detonation transition.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-266291