Small-scale Interaction of Turbulence with Thermonuclear Flames in Type Ia Supernovae

Abstract

Microscopic turbulence-flame interactions of thermonuclear fusion flames occuring in Type Ia Supernovae were studied by means of incompressible direct numerical simulations with a highly simplified flame description. The flame is treated as a single diffusive scalar field with a nonlinear source term. It is characterized by its Prandtl number, Pr << 1, and laminar flame speed, S_L. We find that if S_L ~ u', where u' is the rms amplitude of turbulent velocity fluctuations, the local flame propagation speed does not significantly deviate from S_L even in the presence of velocity fluctuations on scales below the laminar flame thickness. This result is interpreted in the context of subgrid-scale modeling of supernova explosions and the mechanism for deflagration-detonation-transitions.

8 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Astrophys. J

References in corpus (4)

• The Thermonuclear Explosion Of Chandrasekhar Mass White Dwarfs
• Deflagration to Detonation Transition in Thermonuclear Supernovae
• Maximum Brightness and Post-Maximum Decline of Light Curves of SN~Ia: A Comparison of Theory and Observations
• Off-Center Deflagrations In Chandrasekhar Mass SN Ia Models

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Type Ia Supernova Explosion Models
• Three-dimensional Numerical Simulations of Rayleigh-Taylor Unstable Flames in Type Ia Supernovae
• Direct Numerical Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae Flames II: The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
• Element Synthesis in Stars
• Constraining The Single-Degenerate Channel of Type Ia Supernovae With Stable Iron-Group Elements in SNR 3C 397
• Multi-dimensional numerical simulations of type Ia supernova explosions
• Exploration of Aspherical Ejecta Properties in Type Ia Supernova: Progenitor Dependence and Applications to Progenitor Classification
• Constraining deflagration models of Type Ia supernovae through intermediate-mass elements