Statistics – Computation
Scientific paper
May 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21620503m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #216, #205.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.849
Statistics
Computation
Scientific paper
Supernova explosions are among the most dramatic in the universe. Type II supernovae follow core collapse of a massive star, while Type Ia supernovae are typically believed to be thermonuclear explosions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs that have accreted enough material to initiate carbon burning. In both cases, the explosion dynamics are complicated by hydrodynamic instabilities that make spherical symmetry impossible. Non-planar interactions of shocks with steep density gradients result in vorticity deposition that drives Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability growth. Deceleration of those same shock-accelerated interfaces drives the ubiquitous Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability. These processes yield highly nonlinear structures that are further modified by shear-driven Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instabilities, and provide elemental mixing on a wide range of scales.
A broad spectrum of approaches can be applied to study the role of hydrodynamic mixing in SNe. These range from analytic treatments of the fundamental instability problems of classical RT and steady-shock RM, to complex (often multiphysics) computational and experimental systems, including numerical simulations of supernovae and laser-driven laboratory. Between these two extremes lies a third fundamental instability problem that is more relevant than either RT or RM in isolation and somewhat less complex than the full system. Namely, an idealized blast-wave-driven problem in which a localized source drives a divergent Taylor-Sedov blast wave that in turn drives a perturbed interface between heavier and lighter gamma-law fluids. Within this context, we use numerical simulations and simplified analytic models to consider the effect of the initial perturbation spectrum in determining the late-time asymptotic state of the mixing zone, the interaction of multiple unstable interfaces relevant to core-collapse supernovae, and the proximity of the forward shock to the developing instability.
This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
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