Dynamics of supernova bounce in laboratory

TL;DR

Recent high explosive experiments simulate core-collapse supernova conditions, enabling laboratory study of supernova bounce dynamics, hydrodynamics of collapsing flows, and benchmarking astrophysical hydrodynamic codes.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that high explosive experiments can replicate supernova bounce conditions at low entropy, offering a new laboratory platform for astrophysics research.

Findings

High explosive experiments achieve record pressures comparable to supernova core collapse.

Experiments replicate low-entropy conditions similar to supernova simulations.

Potential for these experiments to serve as benchmarks for astrophysical hydrodynamics.

Abstract

We draw attention to recent high explosive (HE) experiments which provide compression of macroscopic amount of matter to high, even record, values of pressure in comparison with other HE experiments. The observed bounce after the compression corresponds to processes in core-collapse supernova explosions after neutrino trapping. Conditions provided in the experiments resemble those in core-collapse supernovae, permitting their use for laboratory astrophysics. A unique feature of the experiments is compression at low entropy. The values of specific entropy are close to those obtained in numerical simulations during the process of collapse in supernova explosions, and much lower than those obtained at laser ignition facilities, another type of high-compression experiment. Both in supernovae and HE experiments the bounce occurs at low entropy, so the HE experiments provide a new platform to realize some supernova collapse effects in laboratory, especially to study hydrodynamics of collapsing flows and the bounce. Due to the good resolution of diagnostics in the compression of macroscopic amounts of material with essential effects of nonideal plasma in EOS, and observed development of 3D instabilities, these experiments may serve as a useful benchmark for astrophysical hydrodynamic codes.