Stochasticity and efficiency of simplified core-collapse supernova explosions

TL;DR

This study uses 3D simulations of simplified core-collapse supernova models to explore how stochastic effects and different physical regimes influence explosion outcomes, highlighting the role of SASI and convection.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified 3D model to compare convection and SASI effects, revealing stochastic explosion behavior and conditions for more robust neutrino-driven explosions.

Findings

SASI-dominated models show stochastic explosion probabilities.

Explosion threshold is smeared over a range of neutrino luminosities.

SASI models can explode with less efficient neutrino heating.

Abstract

We present an initial report on 160 simulations of a highly simplified model of the post-bounce core-collapse supernova environment in three spatial dimensions (3D). We set different values of a parameter characterizing the impact of nuclear dissociation at the stalled shock in order to regulate the post-shock fluid velocity, thereby determining the relative importance of convection and the stationary accretion shock instability (SASI). While our convection-dominated runs comport with the paradigmatic notion of a `critical neutrino luminosity' for explosion at a given mass accretion rate (albeit with a nontrivial spread in explosion times just above threshold), the outcomes of our SASI-dominated runs are much more stochastic: a sharp threshold critical luminosity is `smeared out' into a rising probability of explosion over a $\sim 20\%$ range of luminosity. We also find that the SASI-dominated models are able to explode with 3 to 4 times less efficient neutrino heating, indicating that progenitor properties, and fluid and neutrino microphysics, conducive to the SASI would make the neutrino-driven explosion mechanism more robust.