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| Paper: |
Modeling Sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae |
| Volume: |
444, 5th International Conference of Numerical Modeling of Space Plasma Flows (ASTRONUM 2010) |
| Page: |
15 |
| Authors: |
Fink, M.; Röpke, F. K.; Hillebrandt, W.; Kromer, M.; Sim, S. A.; Seitenzahl, I. R. |
| Abstract: |
The explosion of sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs via the double
detonation scenario is a potential explanation for Type Ia
supernovae. In this scenario, a surface detonation in a helium
layer initiates a detonation in the underlying carbon/oxygen core
leading to an explosion of the whole star. To judge how well this
theoretical model reproduces observations in comparison to other
scenarios, detailed numerical simulations and the calculation of
synthetic spectra and light curves are necessary. However, solving
the reactive Euler equations for explosive nuclear burning in full
star simulations is challenging because of the very wide range of
scales that are involved: from the white dwarf radius of several
thousand kilometers down to the carbon burning length scale that can
be as small as 0.1 mm. Therefore, we use approximate schemes for
nuclear burning in our hydrodynamic simulations that treat the
detonations as reactive discontinuities, propagate them at the
correct speed and release an approximately correct amount of energy
behind the front. More accurate nucleosynthesis is determined
afterwards in a post-processing step from the density and
temperature trajectories of Lagrangian tracer particles that we
passively advect with the flow in the hydrodynamic simulations.
Here, we present details of our burning scheme and discuss
simulation results. |
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