[vsnet-chat 7133] Physics of Flames in Type Ia Supernovae

[Taichi Kato]

Physics of Flames in Type Ia Supernovae

   The physics of nuclear burning in type-Ia supernova is still poorly
understood due to the complexity and numerical difficulties arising from
several orders of magnitudes in scale difference (no computer resource
can trace the microscopic flame-burning front up to the entire star).
It would be nice to hear the 3-D kinetic energy power spectrum obeys
Kolmogorov statistics, one of the best studied physics.  Intersted readers
might read ARA&A 38, 191 (2000) Hillebrandt and Niemeyer to better understand
what you observe.  [And a good introduction to modern physics...]

Paper: astro-ph/0507040
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 20:09:42 GMT   (530kb)

Title: The Physics of Flames in Type Ia Supernovae
Authors: M. Zingale, S. E. Woosley, J. B. Bell, M. S. Day, C. A. Rendleman
Comments: To appear in the Proceedings of the SciDAC 2005 meeting, IOP press
  (http://www.iop.org). Some figures degraded in quality to conserve space
\\
  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, and give detailed diagnostics on the turbulence, showing that the
kinetic energy power spectrum obeys Bolgiano-Obukhov statistics in 2-D, but
Kolmogorov statistics in 3-D. Preliminary results from 3-D reacting bubble
calculations are shown, and their implications for ignition are discussed.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507040 ,  530kb)