Simulations of Core Collapse Supernovae In One and Two Dimemsions Using Multigroup Neutrino Transport

The effects of general relativity (GR) on the hydrodynamics and neutrino transport are examined during the critical shock reheating phase of core collapse supernovae. We find that core collapse computed with GR hydrodynamics results in a substantially more compact core structure out to the shock, the shock radius at stagnation being reduced by a factor of 2. The inflow speed of material behind the shock is also increased by a factor of 2 throughout most of the evolution. We h...

We couple two-dimensional hydrodynamics to realistic one-dimensional multigroup flux-limited diffusion neutrino transport to investigate protoneutron star convection in core collapse supernovae, and more specifically, the interplay between its development and neutrino transport, for both 15 and 25 solar mass models. In the presence of neutrino transport, protoneutron star convection velocities are too small relative to bulk inflow velocities to result in any significant conve...

Recent progress in modeling core-collapse supernovae is summarized and set in perspective. Two-dimensional simulations with state-of-the-art treatment of neutrino transport still fail to produce powerful explosions, but evidence is presented that they are very close to success.

We apply our recently developed code for spherically symmetric, fully general relativistic (GR) Lagrangian hydrodynamics and multigroup flux-limited diffusion neutrino transport to examine the effects of GR on the hydrodynamics and transport during collapse, bounce, and the critical shock reheating phase of core collapse supernovae. Comparisons of models computed with GR versus Newtonian hydrodynamics show that collapse to bounce takes slightly less time in the GR limit, and ...

We present numerical results on two- (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic core-collapse simulations of an 11.2$M_\odot$ star. By changing numerical resolutions and seed perturbations systematically, we study how the postbounce dynamics is different in 2D and 3D. The calculations were performed with an energy-dependent treatment of the neutrino transport based on the isotropic diffusion source approximation scheme, which we have updated to achieve a very high computati...

We present the first results of our spatially axisymmetric core-collapse supernova simulations with full Boltzmann neutrino transport, which amount to a time-dependent 5-dimensional (2 in space and 3 in momentum space) problem in fact. Special relativistic effects are fully taken into account with a two-energy-grid technique. We performed two simulations for a progenitor of 11.2M, employing different nuclear equations-of-state (EOS's): Lattimer and Swesty's EOS with the incom...

Fresh insights and powerful numerical tools are revitalizing the theoretical exploration of the supernova mechanism. The realization that the protoneutron star is Rayleigh-Taylor unstable at various times and radii and, hence, that a multi-dimensional perspective is required is one agent of this revolution. However, a new physical understanding of the nature of explosions (even spherical explosions) that are driven by neutrino heating and that escape from deep within a gravit...

Here we present the results from two sets of simulations, in two and three spatial dimensions. In two dimensions, the simulations include multifrequency flux-limited diffusion neutrino transport in the "ray-by-ray-plus" approximation, two-dimensional self gravity in the Newtonian limit, and nuclear burning through a 14-isotope alpha network. The three-dimensional simulations are model simulations constructed to reflect the post stellar core bounce conditions during neutrino s...

The neutrino mechanism of core-collapse supernova is investigated via non-relativistic, two-dimensional (2D), neutrino radiation-hydrodynamic simulations. For the transport of electron flavor neutrinos, we use the interaction rates defined by Bruenn (1985) and the isotropic diffusion source approximation (IDSA) scheme, which decomposes the transported particles into trapped particle and streaming particle components. Heavy neutrinos are described by a leakage scheme. Unlike t...

Multi-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the post-bounce evolution of collapsed stellar iron cores have demonstrated that convective overturn between the stalled shock and the neutrinosphere can have an important effect on the neutrino-driven explosion mechanism. Whether a model yields a successful explosion or not, however, still depends on the power of neutrino energy deposition behind the stalled shock. The neutrino interaction with the stellar gas in the ``hot bubble...