Growth of a Vortex Mode during Gravitational Collapse Resulting in Type II Supernova

TL;DR

This paper studies the stability of a collapsing iron core in supernovae, revealing an unstable vortex mode that could influence mixing processes during the explosion.

Contribution

It demonstrates the instability of a similarity solution for collapsing cores against non-spherical perturbations, highlighting vortex growth and potential impact on supernova dynamics.

Findings

Perturbations grow as (t - t0)^(-σ) with σ depending on γ and ℓ.

Vortex motion dominates the unstable perturbations.

Potential excitation of global convection during collapse.

Abstract

We investigate stability of a gravitationally collapsing iron core against non-spherical perturbation. The gravitationally collapsing iron core is approximated by a similarity solution for dynamically collapsing polytropic gas sphere. We find that the similarity solution is unstable against non-spherical perturbations. The perturbation grows in proportion to $ (t - t_0) ^{-\sigma} $ while the the central density increases in proportion to $ (t - t_0) ^{-2} $. The growth rate is $ \sigma = 1/3 + \ell (\gamma - 4/3) $, where $ \gamma $ and $ \ell $ denote the polytropic index and the parameter $ \ell $ of the spherical harmonics, $ Y_{\ell} ^m (\theta, \phi) $, respectively. The growing perturbation is dominated by vortex motion. Thus it excites global convection during the collapse and may contribute to material mixing in a type II supernova.