Related papers: Supernovae: Explosions in the Cosmos
I review our current understanding of superluminous supernovae, mysterious events 100 times brighter than conventional stellar explosions.
Massive stars (M> 10Msun) end their lives with spectacular explosions due to gravitational collapse. The collapse turns the stars into compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes with the ejection of cosmic rays and heavy…
Nuclear astrophysics aims at unraveling the cosmic origins of chemical elements and the physical processes powering stars. It constitutes a truly multidisciplinary field, that integrates tools, advancements, and accomplishments from…
How do massive stars explode? Progress toward the answer is driven by increases in compute power. Petascale supercomputers are enabling detailed three-dimensional simulations of core-collapse supernovae. These are elucidating the role of…
Analysis of the polarization of light from supernovae can reveal the shape and distribution of matter ejected from exploding stars. Here we review the young field of Type Ia supernova spectropolarimetry and critically evaluate, and place in…
I discuss the state of the art in the search for neutrinos from galactic stellar collapses and the future perspectives of this field. The implications for the neutrino physics of a high statistics supernova neutrino burst detection by the…
The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic…
Interstellar superbubbles generated by multiple supernova explosions are common in star-forming galaxies. They are the most obvious manifestation of mechanical feedback, and are largely responsible for transferring both thermal and kinetic…
This is a brief sketch of the use of supernovae to measure cosmological parameters. It traces the early work, the events surrounding the discovery and verification of cosmic acceleration using SN Ia, and the efforts today to make sound…
Supernovae explosions of massive stars are nowadays believed to result from a two-step process, with an initial gravitational core collapse followed by an expansion of matter after a bouncing on the core. This scenario meets several…
We describe the propagation of supernova shocks within the surrounding medium, which may be due to mass-loss from the progenitor star. The structure and density profile of the ejected material and surrounding medium are considered. Shock…
Massive stars end their short lives in spectacular explosions, supernovae, that synthesize new elements and drive galaxy evolution. Throughout history supernovae were discovered chiefly through their delayed optical light, preventing…
The outbursts of novae are among the strongest explosions in the Universe. The eruptions involve physical processes that span the whole electromagnetic spectrum, demanding multifrequency observations. The photometric and spectroscopic…
Observations of intensely bright star-forming galaxies both close by and in the distant Universe at first glance seem to emphasize their similarity. But look a little closer, and differences emerge.
Supernovae are Nature's high-energy, high density laboratory experiments, reaching densities in excess of nuclear densities and temperatures above 10MeV. Astronomers have built up a suite of diagnostics to study these supernovae. If we can…
The present understanding of supernova explosion of massive stars as a two-step process, with an initial gravitational collapse toward the center of the star followed by an expansion of matter after a bouncing on the core, meets several…
The quest for the supernova explosion mechanism has been one of the outstanding challenges in computational astrophysics for several decades. Simulations have now progressed to a stage at which the solution appears close and neutrino and…
The heavens are full of neutrinos, but so far we have observed a small subset of those. Performing such observations and analyzing the data from them require a thorough understanding of neutrino interactions. In this short review, the…
Although rare, massive stars, being the main sources of ionizing radiation, chemical enrichment and mechanical energy in the Galaxy, are the most important objects of the stellar population. This review presents the many different aspects…
While an understanding of supernova explosions will require sophisticated large-scale simulations, it is nevertheless possible to outline the most basic features of the neutrino emission resulting from stellar core collapse with a…