The Explosion Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernovae and Its Observational Signatures

TL;DR

This paper reviews the explosion mechanism of core-collapse supernovae, discussing theoretical models and comparing them with observational data to better understand the explosion process and its outcomes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison between parameterized supernova models and observational signatures, advancing understanding of supernova explosion mechanisms.

Findings

Models predict diverse explosion energies and remnant properties.

Observations increasingly constrain theoretical models.

New data from surveys improve understanding of supernova mechanisms.

Abstract

The death of massive stars is shrouded in many mysteries. One of them is the mechanism that overturns the collapse of the degenerate iron core into an explosion, a process that determines the supernova explosion energy, properties of the surviving compact remnant, and the nucleosynthetic yields. The number of core-collapse supernova observations has been growing with an accelerating pace thanks to modern time-domain astronomical surveys and new tests of the explosion mechanism are becoming possible. We review predictions of parameterized supernova explosion models and compare them with explosion properties inferred from observed light curves, spectra, and neutron star masses.