Flame Energetics and the Deflagration Phase of Type Ia Supernovae

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Scientific paper

The enormous (1012) range in the spatial scales encountered in the thermonuclear deflagration stage of a Type Ia supernova mandates the use of a model to describe burning on unresolved scales. A realistic model must accurately describe (1) the nuclear energy that is released, (2) the timescale on which it is released, and (3) compositional changes occurring in the flame. Building on the thick flame model of Khokhlov (1995), we have developed a three-stage burning model (involving carbon fusion, burning to Si-group, and finally relaxation to NSE). In this poster, we present details of and simulations with this new three-stage burning model. We utilize self-heating network calculations of nuclear burning to quantify the energies that are released and the timescales on which the energies are released. We use tabulated results from a nuclear statistical equilibrium (NSE) code for describing the state of the evolving ash in NSE and addressing the effects of neutronization. The reaction network includes up-to-date thermonuclear reaction rates, weak interaction rates, effects of electron screening, and nuclear partition functions, and has been shown to be consistent with the NSE method. We have initiated a study with the improved energetics exploring the effect of the initial conditions on the deflagration phase. In particular, we present the results of two-dimensional simulations in which we vary the off-set distance of a single ignition spot from the center of the white dwarf.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant No. B523820 to the Center for Astrophysics Flashes and by the National Science Foundation under grant PHY 02-16783 to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics and grant AST-0507456.

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