The Most Powerful Stellar Explosions
ORAL
Abstract
We present the results from our 3D simulations of thermonuclear supernovae from the stars with initial masses above 80 solar masses by using CASTRO, a new, massively parallel, multidimensional Eulerian, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), radiation-hydrodynamics code. We first use Kepler, a one-dimensional spherically-symmetric Lagrangian code to model the possible explosions beyond hypernovae. These extreme explosions include two types of electron/positron production instability supernovae and one type of general relativity instability supernovae. The resulting 1D presupernova profiles are mapped onto 3D grids of CASTRO as initial conditions. We simulate the explosion in 3D and resolve the emergent fluid instabilities. In this talk, we will discuss the energetics, nucleosynthesis, and possible observational signatures of these supernovae.
*This work has been supported by the KITP Graduate Fellowship, University of Minnesota Johnston Fellowship, DOE SciDAC program, Sigma Xi Grants-in- Aid of Research Program, and the University of Minnesota Thesis Research Grant.
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