Towards Modeling Self-Consistent Core Collapse Supernovae

Core-collapse supernovae (CCSN) are multi-dimensional events and the codes we develop to model them must follow suit. Our group at the Oak Ridge National Lab has successfully generated self-consistent explosions in 2D of 12-25 solar mass stars using our code CHIMERA. This code is made up of three essentially independent parts designed to evolve the stellar gas hydrodynamics (VH1/MVH3), the ``ray-by-ray-plus'' multi-group neutrino transport (MGFLD-TRANS), and the nuclear kinetics (XNET). Incorporation of passive tracer particles, for post-processing nucleosynthesis, allows us to explore effects that stem from anisotropies, instabilities, and mixing. An extension of our alpha-nuclear network to 150 species, has enabled us to identify nuclear processes such as the nu-p process and better follow the neutronization during the explosion. These advances also allow us to investigate lower mass limit O-Ne-Mg CCSN and possible sites for the production of weak r-process elements. In this poster, we will present results of these efforts.