Neutrino-driven explosions twenty years after SN1987A

TL;DR

This paper reviews two decades of research on neutrino-driven supernova explosions, highlighting recent 2D simulations that demonstrate the mechanism's viability across various progenitor masses and emphasizing the role of SASI in explosion dynamics.

Contribution

It presents new 2D hydrodynamic simulation results showing neutrino-driven explosions in a broader mass range and elucidates the importance of SASI in shock revival and explosion asymmetries.

Findings

Neutrino-driven explosions occur in stars from 8 to 15 solar masses.

Large-amplitude bipolar oscillations (SASI) support shock revival in massive stars.

Low-mode deformation may explain pulsar kicks and supernova asymmetries.

Abstract

The neutrino-heating mechanism remains a viable possibility for the cause of the explosion in a wide mass range of supernova progenitors. This is demonstrated by recent two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations with detailed, energy-dependent neutrino transport. Neutrino-driven explosions were not only found for stars in the range of 8-10 solar masses with ONeMg cores and in case of the iron core collapse of a progenitor with 11 solar masses, but also for a ``typical'' progenitor model of 15 solar masses. For such more massive stars, however, the explosion occurs significantly later than so far thought, and is crucially supported by large-amplitude bipolar oscillations due to the nonradial standing accretion shock instability (SASI), whose low (dipole and quadrupole) modes can develop large growth rates in conditions where convective instability is damped or even suppressed. The dominance of low-mode deformation at the time of shock revival has been recognized as a possible explanation of large pulsar kicks and of large-scale mixing phenomena observed in supernovae like SN 1987A.