Physics and Astronomy Seminar - Ondrej Pejcha, Princeton University

Title: "The Rugged Landscape of the Core-Collapse Supernova Explosions"

March 31, 2015
2 pm - 3 pm
Location
Wilder 202
Sponsored by
Physics & Astronomy Department
Audience
Public
More information
Tressena Manning
603-646-2854

Abstract: The collapse of the core and the associated supernova
explosion mark the end of life of most massive stars. Despite
observations of thousands of supernovae, detailed numerical
calculations and theoretical efforts, the mechanism of explosion is
poorly understood and perhaps even unknown. By parameterizing the
systematic uncertainty in the explosion mechanism, we study how the
explosion threshold maps onto observables - fraction of successful
explosions, remnant neutron star and black hole mass functions,
explosion energies, nickel yields - and their mutual correlations.
Successful explosions are intertwined with failures in a complex but
well-defined pattern that is not well described by the progenitor
initial mass and is tied to the pre-collapse structure of the
progenitor star. We present a new method to extract parameters from
supernova light curves and expansion velocities, finding strong
degeneracies in the inferences of the explosion energy, the ejecta
mass and the nickel mass.

Location
Wilder 202
Sponsored by
Physics & Astronomy Department
Audience
Public
More information
Tressena Manning
603-646-2854