On Simulating Type Ia Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper discusses the simulation of Type Ia supernovae, focusing on modeling the thermonuclear explosion process in white dwarfs, and presents results on supernova systematics and computational performance.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed multi-scale simulation framework for Type Ia supernovae, including a novel flame-capturing scheme for turbulent combustion.

Findings

Supernova brightness correlates with host galaxy properties, matching observations.

Simulations demonstrate the feasibility of modeling supernovae on leadership-class supercomputers.

The flame-capturing scheme effectively models turbulent thermonuclear flames.

Abstract

Type Ia supernovae are bright stellar explosions distinguished by standardizable light curves that allow for their use as distance indicators for cosmological studies. Despite their highly successful use in this capacity, the progenitors of these events are incompletely understood. We describe simulating type Ia supernovae in the paradigm of a thermonuclear runaway occurring in a massive white dwarf star. We describe the multi-scale physical processes that realistic models must incorporate and the numerical models for these that we employ. In particular, we describe a flame-capturing scheme that addresses the problem of turbulent thermonuclear combustion on unresolved scales. We present the results of our study of the systematics of type Ia supernovae including trends in brightness following from properties of the host galaxy that agree with observations. We also present performance results from simulations on leadership-class architectures.