Related papers: Physics of Superluminous Supernovae
In this chapter I review the effects of supernovae explosions on the dynamical evolution of (1) binary stars and (2) star clusters. (1) Supernovae in binaries can drastically alter the orbit of the system, sometimes disrupting it entirely,…
The rapidly growing base of observational data for supernova explosions of massive stars demands theoretical explanations. Central of these is a self-consistent model for the physical mechanism that provides the energy to start and drive…
Massive stars play a major role not only in stellar evolution but also galactic evolution theory. This is because of their dynamical interaction with binary companions, and because their strong winds and explosive deaths as supernovae…
Interacting supernovae provide key insights into the mass-loss processes of massive stars and their circumstellar environments. By analyzing their photometric and spectroscopic properties, we can study the complex interactions between…
Neutrinos play a key role in core-collapse supernova explosions. Carrying information from deep inside the stellar core, neutrinos are direct probes of the supernova mechanism. Intriguing recent developments on the role of neutrinos in…
Supernovae (SNe) that show evidence of strong shock interaction between their ejecta and pre-existing, slower circumstellar material (CSM) constitute an interesting, diverse, and still poorly understood category of explosive transients. The…
Massive stars can significantly modify the surrounding medium during their lifetime. When the stars explode as supernovae, the resulting shock wave expands within this modified medium and not within the interstellar medium. We explore the…
Supernovae are the most powerful cosmic sources of MeV neutrinos. These elementary particles play a crucial role when the evolution of a massive star is terminated by the collapse of its core to a neutron star or a black hole and the star…
The study of core-collapse supernova remnants (SNRs) presents a fascinating puzzle, with intricate morphologies and a non-uniform distribution of stellar debris. Particularly, young remnants (aged less than 5000 years) hold immense value as…
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…
Supernovae descendent from massive stars explode in media that have been modified by their progenitors' mass loss and UV radiation. The supernova ejecta will first interact with the circumstellar material shed by the progenitors at late…
Core-collapse supernovae are among the most energetic explosions in the universe marking the catastrophic end of massive stars. In spite of rigorous studies for several decades, we still don't understand the explosion mechanism completely.…
How massive stars die -- what sort of explosion and remnant each produces -- depends chiefly on the masses of their helium cores and hydrogen envelopes at death. For single stars, stellar winds are the only means of mass loss, and these are…
Modern photometric surveys of the sky suggest that many, perhaps most supernovae (SNe) associated with the explosion of massive stars are influenced at an appreciable level by their interaction with circumstellar material (CSM). The…
Type Ia supernovae are a powerful cosmological probe, that gave the first strong evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Here we provide an overview of how supernovae can go further to reveal information about what is…
Neutron stars, the compact stellar remnants of core-collapse supernova explosions, are unique cosmic laboratories for exploring novel phases of matter under extreme conditions. In particular, the occurrence of superfluidity and…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
Neutrinos play a crucial role in the collapse and explosion of massive stars, governing the infall dynamics of the stellar core, triggering and fueling the explosion and driving the cooling and deleptonization of the newly formed neutron…
The observation of neutrinos from Supernova~1987A has confirmed the theoretical conjecture that these particles play a crucial role during the collapse of the core of a massive star. Only one per cent of the energy they carry away from the…
Stars of ~8-100 solar masses end their lives as core-collapse supernovae (SNe). In the process they emit a powerful burst of neutrinos, produce a variety of elements, and leave behind either a neutron star or a black hole. The wide mass…