Session B14 - Galaxies, Supernovae, and Cosmology.
ORAL session, Saturday morning, April 28
Room 14, Renaissance Hotel$
The paper presents first results of modeling a deflagration explosion in a non-rotating, Chandrasekhar-mass carbon-oxygen (CO) white dwarf. Simulations show that the turbulent flame speed grows exponentially, reaches approximately 30% of the speed of sound, and then declines as the large-scale turbulence is frozen by expansion. The freezing of turbulent motions appears to be a crucial physical mechanism regulating the strength of a deflagration explosion in SNIa. The energy of the explosion is comparable to that of a typical SNIa. However, the presence of the outer layer of unburned CO and the formation of intermediate mass elements and pockets of unburned CO near the center pose problems for SNIa spectra. Sensitivity of the explosion outcome to initial conditions and its relation to a diversity of SNIa is discussed.