Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Tuesday, 13 September 2022, 09:45   (Keksdose / virtual plenum)

Core-Collapse Supernovae: From Neutrino-driven Explosion Models to Observations

Hans-Thomas Janka
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Supernova explosions terminate the lives of massive stars, produce and disseminate a major fraction of the heavy elements, play an important role as neutrino and particle laboratories, and give birth to neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes, which have recently become sources of measured gravitational waves. After more than 50 years of progressively improved computational modeling, first-principle three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic simulations with detailed neutrino physics have meanwhile accomplished to demonstrate the viability of the neutrino-driven explosion mechanism, originally suggested by Colgate & White in 1966. On the way to this achievement, it had to be recognized that not only the radial structure of the progenitors is an important initial condition, but also 3D density and velocity perturbations due to convective shell burning prior to stellar core collapse are crucial for the success of the mechanism. The consequences of the neutrino-driven explosions can now be confronted with observations. In particular, state-of-the-art self-consistent 3D simulations of such supernovae provide new insights into the geometrical and chemical structure of young supernova remnants, possible explosion-progenitor connections, and the natal properties (masses, kicks, spins) of the compact objects formed in stellar core-collapse events. They have also allowed us to better understand the nature of the progenitor and the explosion of the famous Supernova 1987A and to predict the most-likely location of its relic neutron star. The arduous journey of developing the numerical tools combined with the latest and most accurate treatments of the microphysics, and achieving their most efficient application on the fastest available supercomputers, required the contributions and dedicated works of many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows over more than two decades. This would not have been possible without the continuous funding by the German Research Foundation through several Collaborative Research Centres. Also an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council for the 3D modeling of core-collapse supernovae provided valuable support for five years. The author is particularly indebted to his long-time collaborators and friends Ewald M"uller and Georg Raffelt. Supercomputing resources from the PRACE Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), and the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) are thankfully acknowledged.