No Arabic abstract
We briefly review the young field of spectropolarimetry of core-collapse supernovae (SNe). Spectropolarimetry provides the only direct known probe of early-time supernova (SN) geometry. The fundamental result is that asphericity is a ubiquitous feature of young core-collapse SNe. However, the nature and degree of the asphericity vary considerably. The best predictor of core-collapse SN polarization seems to be the mass of the hydrogen envelope that is intact at the time of the explosion: those SNe that arise from progenitors with large, intact envelopes (e.g., Type II-plateau) have very low polarization, while those that result from progenitors that have lost part (SN IIb, SN IIn) or all (SN Ib) of their hydrogen (or even helium; SN Ic) layers prior to the explosion tend to show substantial polarization. Thus, the deeper we probe into core-collapse events, the greater the asphericity seems to be, suggesting a fundamentally asymmetric explosion with the asymmetry damped by the addition of envelope material.
Knowledge of the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae is a fundamental component in understanding the explosions. The recent progress in finding such stars is reviewed. The minimum initial mass that can produce a supernova has converged to 8 +/- 1 solar masses, from direct detections of red supergiant progenitors of II-P SNe and the most massive white dwarf progenitors, although this value is model dependent. It appears that most type Ibc supernovae arise from moderate mass interacting binaries. The highly energetic, broad-lined Ic supernovae are likely produced by massive, Wolf-Rayet progenitors. There is some evidence to suggest that the majority of massive stars above ~20 solar masses may collapse quietly to black-holes and that the explosions remain undetected. The recent discovery of a class of ultra-bright type II supernovae and the direct detection of some progenitor stars bearing luminous blue variable characteristics suggests some very massive stars do produce highly energetic explosions. The physical mechanism is open to debate and these SNe pose a challenge to stellar evolutionary theory.
Advances in our understanding and the modeling of stellar core-collapse and supernova explosions over the past 15 years are reviewed, concentrating on the evolution of hydrodynamical simulations, the description of weak interactions and nuclear equation of state effects, and new insights into the nucleosynthesis occurring in the early phases of the explosion, in particular the neutrino-p process. The latter is enabled by the proton-richness of the early ejecta, which was discovered because of significant progress has been made in the treatment of neutrino transport and weak interactions. This progress has led to a new generation of sophisticated Newtonian and relativistic hydrodynamics simulations in spherical symmetry. Based on these, it is now clear that the prompt bounce-shock mechanism is not the driver of supernova explosions, and that the delayed neutrino-heating mechanism can produce explosions without the aid of multi-dimensional processes only if the progenitor star has an ONeMg core inside a very dilute He-core, i.e., has a mass in the 8--10 solar mass range. Hydrodynamic instabilities of various kinds have indeed been recognized to occur in the supernova core and to be of potential importance for the explosion. Neutrino-driven explosions, however, have been seen in two-dimensional simulations with sophisticated neutrino transport so far only when the star has a small iron core and low density in the surrounding shells as being found in stars near 10--11 solar masses. The explosion mechanism of more massive progenitors is still a puzzle. It might involve effects of three-dimensional hydrodynamics or might point to the relevance of rapid rotation and magnetohydrodynamics, or to still incompletely explored properties of neutrinos and the high-density equation of state.
Hydrogen-rich core collapse supernovae, known as Type II supernovae, are the most common type of stellar explosion realized in nature. They are defined by the presence of prominent hydrogen lines in their spectra. Type II supernovae are observed only in star-forming galaxies, and several events have been directly linked to massive star progenitors. Five main subclasses are identified: Type IIP (displaying a plateau in their light curve), Type IIL (displaying a light curve decline), Type IIn (displaying narrow emission lines), Type IIb (displaying increasingly strong He features with time) and 87A-likes (displaying long-rising light curves similar to that of SN 1987A). Type IIP supernovae have been robustly established as the explosions of red supergiants, while the progenitors of Type IILs remain elusive. Type IIns are likely linked to luminous blue variables, Type IIb progenitors may be interacting binary systems and the prototype of the 87A-like class was observed to be the explosion of a blue supergiant. The diversity in progenitor mass, metallicity, binarity and rotation is likely responsible for the diversity in observed explosion types, but the connection between progenitor parameters and supernova properties is not yet entirely understood theoretically nor fully mapped observationally. New observational methods for constraining this connection are currently being implemented, including the analyses of large samples of events, making use of very early data (obtained hours to days from explosion) and statistical studies of host-galaxy properties.
We investigate correlated gravitational wave and neutrino signals from rotating core-collapse supernovae with simulations. Using an improved mode identification procedure based on mode function matching, we show that a linear quadrupolar mode of the core produces a dual imprint on gravitational waves and neutrinos in the early post-bounce phase of the supernova. The angular harmonics of the neutrino emission are consistent with the mode energy around the neutrinospheres, which points to a mechanism for the imprint on neutrinos. Thus, neutrinos carry information about the mode amplitude in the outer region of the core, whereas gravitational waves probe deeper in. We also find that the best-fit mode function has a frequency bounded above by $sim 420$ Hz, and yet the modes frequency in our simulations is $sim 15%$ higher, due to the use of Newtonian hydrodynamics and a widely used pseudo-Newtonian gravity approximation. This overestimation is particularly important for the analysis of gravitational wave detectability and asteroseismology, pointing to limitations of pseudo-Newtonian approaches for these purposes, possibly even resulting in excitation of incorrect modes. In addition, mode frequency matching (as opposed to mode function matching) could be resulting in mode misidentification in recent work. Lastly, we evaluate the prospects of a multimessenger detection of the mode using current technology. The detection of the imprint on neutrinos is most challenging, with a maximum detection distance of $sim!1$ kpc using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The maximum distance for detecting the complementary gravitational wave imprint is $sim!5$ kpc using Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity.
Core-collapse supernovae are among Natures most energetic events. They mark the end of massive star evolution and pollute the interstellar medium with the life-enabling ashes of thermonuclear burning. Despite their importance for the evolution of galaxies and life in the universe, the details of the core-collapse supernova explosion mechanism remain in the dark and pose a daunting computational challenge. We outline the multi-dimensional, multi-scale, and multi-physics nature of the core-collapse supernova problem and discuss computational strategies and requirements for its solution. Specifically, we highlight the axisymmetric (2D) radiation-MHD code VULCAN/2D and present results obtained from the first full-2D angle-dependent neutrino radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of the post-core-bounce supernova evolution. We then go on to discuss the new code Zelmani which is based on the open-source HPC Cactus framework and provides a scalable AMR approach for 3D fully general-relativistic modeling of stellar collapse, core-collapse supernovae and black hole formation on current and future massively-parallel HPC systems. We show Zelmanis scaling properties to more than 16,000 compute cores and discuss first 3D general-relativistic core-collapse results.