Related papers: Flame fronts in Supernovae Ia and their pulsationa…
Type Ia supernovae have recently received considerable attention because it appears that they can be used as "standard candles" to measure cosmic distances out to billions of light years away from us. Observations of type Ia supernovae seem…
A simple, semi-analytic representation is developed for nuclear burning in Type Ia supernovae in the special case where turbulent eddies completely disrupt the flame. The speed and width of the ``distributed'' flame front are derived. For…
The stability of a magnetic deflagration front in a collection of molecular magnets, such as Mn_12-acetate, is considered. It is demonstrated that stationary deflagration is unstable with respect to one-dimensional perturbations if the…
The large range of time and length scales involved in type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) requires the use of flame models. As a prelude to exploring various options for flame models, we consider, in this paper, high-resolution three-dimensional…
We present a numerical model which allows us to investigate thermonuclear flames in Type Ia supernova explosions. The model is based on a finite-volume explicit hydrodynamics solver employing PPM. Using the level-set technique combined with…
Type Ia supernovae are associated with thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf stars. Combustion processes convert material in nuclear reactions and release the energy required to explode the stars. At the same time, they produce the…
Detailed models of the explosion of a white dwarf, which include self-consistent calculations of the light curve and spectra, provide a link between observational quantities and the underlying explosion.These calculations assume spherical…
The aim of this work is to characterize the thermodynamic state of fuel mixed into the turbulent flame brush in the context of the Zel'dovich deflagration-to-detonation transition (ZDDT) mechanism of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). We perform…
The nature of carbon burning flames in Type Ia supernovae is explored as they interact with Kolmogorov turbulence. One-dimensional calculations using the Linear Eddy Model of Kerstein (1991) elucidate three regimes of turbulent burning. In…
We develop and calibrate a realistic model flame for hydrodynamical simulations of deflagrations in white dwarf (Type Ia) supernovae. Our flame model builds on the advection-diffusion-reaction model of Khokhlov and includes electron…
In this paper, we review the present state of theoretical models of thermonuclear supernovae, and compare their predicitions with the constraints derived from observations of Type Ia supernovae. The diversity of explosion mechanisms usually…
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…
Although delayed detonation models of thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs seem promising for reproducing Type Ia supernovae, the transition of the flame propagation mode from subsonic deflagration to supersonic detonation remains…
We extend a low Mach number hydrodynamics method developed for terrestrial combustion, to the study of thermonuclear flames in Type Ia supernovae. We discuss the differences between 2-D and 3-D Rayleigh-Taylor unstable flame simulations,…
Planar flames are intrinsically unstable in open domains due to the thermal expansion across the burning front--the Landau-Darrieus instability. This instability leads to wrinkling and growth of the flame surface, and corresponding…
The propagation of cellularly stabilized thermonuclear flames is investigated by means of numerical simulations. In Type Ia supernova explosions the corresponding burning regime establishes at scales below the Gibson length. The cellular…
We present high-resolution, full-star simulations of the post-ignition phase of Type Ia supernovae using the compressible hydrodynamics code Castro. Initial conditions, including the turbulent velocity field and ignition site, are imported…
Critically understanding the `standard candle'-like behavior of Type Ia supernovae requires understanding their explosion mechanism. One family of models for Type Ia Supernovae begins with a deflagration in a Carbon-Oxygen white dwarf which…
We develop an improved method for tracking the nuclear flame during the deflagration phase of a Type Ia supernova, and apply it to study the variation in outcomes expected from the gravitationally confined detonation (GCD) paradigm. A…
We show that a flame tracking/capturing scheme originally developed for deflagration fronts can be used to model thermonuclear detonations in multidimensional explosion simulations of type Ia supernovae. After testing the accuracy of the…