Low Mach Number Modeling of Convection in Helium Shells on Sub-Chandrasekhar White Dwarfs. I. Methodology

Abstract

We assess the robustness of a low Mach number hydrodynamics algorithm for modeling helium shell convection on the surface of a white dwarf in the context of the sub-Chandrasekhar model for Type Ia supernovae. We use the low Mach number stellar hydrodynamics code, MAESTRO, to perform three-dimensional, spatially-adaptive simulations of convection leading up to the point of the ignition of a burning front. We show that the low Mach number hydrodynamics model provides a robust description of the system.

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References in corpus (5)

• Double-detonation sub-Chandrasekhar supernovae: can minimum helium shell masses detonate the core?
• Double-detonation sub-Chandrasekhar supernovae: synthetic observables for minimum helium shell mass models
• Double-detonation supernovae of sub-Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs
• High-Resolution Simulations of Convection Preceding Ignition in Type Ia Supernovae Using Adaptive Mesh Refinement
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• MAESTROeX: A Massively Parallel Low Mach Number Astrophysical Solver
• Low Mach Number Modeling of Convection in Helium Shells on Sub-Chandrasekhar White Dwarfs II: Bulk Properties of Simple Models
• Meeting the Challenges of Modeling Astrophysical Thermonuclear Explosions: Castro, Maestro, and the AMReX Astrophysics Suite
• Dynamical He Flashes in Double White Dwarf Binaries
• Exploration of Aspherical Ejecta Properties in Type Ia Supernova: Progenitor Dependence and Applications to Progenitor Classification
• An Improved Method for Coupling Hydrodynamics with Astrophysical Reaction Networks
• Curvilinear Grids for WENO Methods in Astrophysical Simulations
• Confronting double-detonation sub-Chandrasekhar models with the low-luminosity suppression of Type Ia supernovae
• Thermonuclear (Type Ia) Supernovae and Progenitor Evolution
• Off-centre ignition of sub-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs does not resolve the tension with the observed $t_0$-$M_{\mathrm{Ni}56}$ relation of type Ia supernovae
• Modelling low Mach number stellar hydrodynamics with MAESTROeX