paper

A Unified Mechanism for Unconfined Deflagration-to-Detonation Transition in Terrestrial Chemical Systems and Type Ia Supernovae

arXiv:1911.00050 · doi:10.1126/science.aau7365

Abstract

The nature of type Ia supernovae (SNIa) - thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf stars - is an open question in astrophysics. Virtually all existing theoretical models of normal, bright SNIa require the explosion to produce a detonation in order to consume all of stellar material, but the mechanism for the deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) remains unclear. We present a unified theory of turbulence-induced DDT that describes the mechanism and conditions for initiating detonation both in unconfined chemical and thermonuclear explosions. The model is validated using experiments with chemical flames and numerical simulations of thermonuclear flames. We use the developed theory to determine criteria for detonation initiation in the single degenerate Chandrasekhar-mass SNIa model, and show that DDT is almost inevitable at densities 10^7 - 10^8 g/cc.

32 pages of main text and 12 pages of supplementary materials; 10 figures; This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science, 01 Nov 2019: Vol. 366, Issue 6465, eaau7365 DOI: 10.1126/science.aau7365

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