Asymmetric explosion of core-collapse supernovae, theory and experiment

Séminaire IPAG de Thierry Foglizzo (CEA Saclay), jeudi 27 janvier 2011 à 11h00, IPAG seminar room

Massive stars end their life with the gravitational collapse of their core and the formation of a neutron star. Their explosion as a supernova depends on the revival of a spherical accretion shock, located in the inner 200km and stalled during a few hundred milliseconds. Numerical simulations suggest that an asymmetric explosion is induced by a hydrodynamical instability named SASI. Its non radial character is able to influence the kick and the spin of the resulting neutron star. I will review the current status of these discoveries and present the SWASI experiment. This simple shallow water analog of SASI is designed to illustrate the asymmetric nature of core-collapse supernova.