Solutions to the Core-Collapse Supernova Problem from Theory

核心坍缩超新星戏剧性地宣告了大质量恒星的死亡以及中子星和黑洞的诞生。在这个剧烈的过程中，许多不同类型的物理学开始发挥作用，以确定恒星是否爆炸以及如何爆炸。然而，爆炸的精确机制还没有得到明确的确定，这个50年来的难题是理论天体物理学中尚未解决的核心问题之一。普林斯顿大学的一个研究小组将对核心坍缩超新星进行三维计算机模拟，目的是确定爆炸机制、能量以及爆炸后剩余中子星的形态和质量。核心坍缩爆炸过程的三维模型将是迄今为止最完整、最详细、最真实的模型之一，并将作为与超新星及其产物观测结果进行比较的关键基准。这些模拟产生的视频产品，研究人员将改编成演讲和展示给公众。研究人员将使用新开发和发布的FORNAX代码进行核心坍缩超新星的三维辐射/流体动力学模拟，该代码结合了最先进的微物理学和方法。研究小组发现，他们所有具有真实物理性质的模型都被中微子加热机制爆炸了。他们将在这一结果的基础上进一步研究多体修正对中微子-核子截面的影响，坍缩前种子扰动，广义相对论，以及非弹性中微子-电子和中微子-核子散射对超新星爆炸的影响。此外，该提案通过探索天体物理爆炸中的核合成，中微子的性质以及致密核物质的状态和相方程来支持实验核物理程序。所得数值结果的概要版本将在网上提供。

Core-collapse supernovae dramatically announce the deaths of massive stars and the births of neutron stars and black holes. During this violent process, many different types of physics come into play to determine whether and how the star explodes. However, the precise mechanism of explosion has not been unambiguously determined, and this fifty-year-old conundrum is one of the central remaining unsolved problems in theoretical astrophysics.   A research team at Princeton University will conduct three-dimensional computer simulations of core-collapse supernovae with the goal of determining the explosion mechanisms, energies, and the morphologies and masses of the residual neutron stars left after the explosion.  The three-dimensional models of the core-collapse explosion process will be among the most complete, detailed, and realistic ever performed and will serve as crucial benchmarks for comparisons with observations of supernovae and their products.  These simulations produce video products, which the researchers will adapt into talks and displays for the public.The investigators will conduct three-dimensional radiation/hydrodynamic simulations of core-collapse supernovae using the newly-developed and published code FORNAX, which incorporates state-of-the-art microphysics and methodologies.   The research team has found that all their models with realistic physics explode by the neutrino heating mechanism.  They will build on this result to further study the effects of many-body corrections to neutrino-nucleon cross sections, pre-collapse seed perturbations, general relativity, and inelastic neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering on the supernova explosions.  In addition, this proposal supports the experimental nuclear physics program by exploring nucleosynthesis in astrophysical explosions, the properties of the neutrino, and the equation of state and phases of dense nuclear matter.  A synoptic version of the numerical results derived will be made available on the web.