Related papers: Physics of Superluminous Supernovae
Supernovae play a critical role in observational cosmology as well as in astrophysics of stars and galaxies. Recent era has seen dramatic progress in the research of supernovae. Several programs to search systematically supernovae in nearby…
Massive stars are extremely luminous and drive strong winds, blowing a large part of their matter into the galactic environment before they finally explode as a supernova. Quantitative knowledge of massive star feedback is required to…
Massive stars are the drivers of star formation and galactic dynamics due to their relatively short lives and explosive demises, thus impacting all of astrophysics. Since they are so impactful on their environments, through their winds on…
While the modern stellar IMF shows a rapid decline with increasing mass, theoretical investigations suggest that very massive stars (>100 solar masses) may have been abundant in the early universe. Other calculations also indicate that,…
Core-collapse supernova explosions play a wide role in astrophysics by producing compact remnants (neutron stars, black holes) and the synthesis and injection of many heavy elements into their host Galaxy. Because they are produced in some…
Superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) are a population of supernovae (SNe) whose peak luminosities are much larger than those of canonical SNe. Although SLSNe were simply defined by their peak luminosity at first, it is currently recognized that…
Supernovae are the dominant source of stellar feedback, which plays an important role in regulating galaxy formation and evolution. While this feedback process is still quite uncertain, it is probably not due to individual supernova…
When a massive star ends its life, its core collapses, forming a neutron star or black hole and producing some of the most energetic explosions in the universe. Core-collapse supernovae and long-duration gamma-ray bursts are the violent…
Massive stars are important metal factories in the Universe. They have short and energetic lives, and many of them inevitably explode as a supernova and become a neutron star or black hole. In turn, the formation, evolution and explosive…
We review the status of the current quest to understand the mechanism of core-collapse supernovae, if neutrino-driven. In the process, we discuss the spherical explosion paradigm and its problems, some results from our new suite of collapse…
We report here on recent progress in understanding the birth conditions of neutron stars and the way how supernovae explode. More sophisticated numerical models have led to the discovery of new phenomena in the supernova core, for example a…
The explosion of core-collapse supernova depends on a sequence of events taking place in less than a second in a region of a few hundred kilometers at the center of a supergiant star, after the stellar core approaches the Chandrasekhar mass…
I review our current understanding of superluminous supernovae, mysterious events 100 times brighter than conventional stellar explosions.
Type Ia supernovae are bright stellar explosions thought to occur when a thermonuclear runaway consumes roughly a solar mass of degenerate stellar material. These events produce and disseminate iron-peak elements, and properties of their…
Supernova theory, numerical and analytic, has made remarkable progress in the past decade. This progress was made possible by more sophisticated simulation tools, especially for neutrino transport, improved microphysics, and deeper insights…
Nuclear reactions transform atomic nuclei inside stars. This is the process of stellar nucleosynthesis. The basic concepts of determining nuclear reaction rates inside stars are reviewed. How stars manage to burn their fuel so slowly most…
Although the details of the core-collapse supernova mechanism are not fully understood, it is generally accepted that the energy released in the collapse produces a shock that disrupts the star and produces the explosion. Some of the…
The question why and how core-collapse supernovae (SNe) explode is one of the central and most long-standing riddles of stellar astrophysics. A solution is crucial for deciphering the SN phenomenon, for predicting observable signals such as…
Supernovae are nature's grandest explosions and an astrophysical laboratory in which unique conditions exist that are not achievable on Earth. They are also the furnaces in which most of the elements heavier than carbon have been forged.…
The explosion mechanism of core-collapse supernovae is a long-standing problem in stellar astrophysics. We briefly outline the main contenders for a solution and review recent efforts to model core-collapse supernova explosions by means of…