Models for Type Ia supernovae and related astrophysical transients

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent modeling efforts of Type Ia supernovae and related transients, highlighting challenges, numerical approaches, and the application of models to various explosion scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of modeling techniques and discusses their application to different supernova explosion scenarios, addressing current challenges and future directions.

Findings

Multiple modeling approaches are used for different explosion scenarios.

Numerical methods face challenges due to multi-physics and multi-scale complexities.

Current models have successes but also notable shortcomings.

Abstract

We give an overview of recent efforts to model Type Ia supernovae and related astrophysical transients resulting from thermonuclear explosions in white dwarfs. In particular we point out the challenges resulting from the multi-physics multi-scale nature of the problem and discuss possible numerical approaches to meet them in hydrodynamical explosion simulations and radiative transfer modeling. We give examples of how these methods are applied to several explosion scenarios that have been proposed to explain distinct subsets or, in some cases, the majority of the observed events. In case we comment on some of the successes and shortcoming of these scenarios and highlight important outstanding issues.