The impact of progenitor asymmetries on the neutrino-driven convection in core-collapse supernovae

The explosion of massive stars in core-collapse supernovae may be aided by the convective instabilities that develop in their innermost nuclear burning shells. The resulting fluctuations support the explosion by generating additional turbulence behind the supernova shock. It was suggested that the buoyant density perturbations arising from the interaction of the pre-collapse asymmetries with the shock may be the primary contributor to the enhancement of the neutrino-driven turbulent convection in the post-shock region. Employing three-dimensional numerical simulations of a toy model, we investigate the impact of such density perturbations on the post-shock turbulence. We consider a wide range of perturbation parameters. The spatial scale and the amplitude of the perturbations are found to be of comparable importance. The turbulence is particularly enhanced when the perturbation frequency is close to that of the convective turnovers in the gain region. Our analysis confirms that the buoyant density perturbations is indeed the main source of the additional turbulence in the gain region, validating the previous order-of-magnitude estimates.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures. Minor revisions following referee comments including additional 3D simulations and updated Figs. 5 and 10. Matches version published in MNRA

Radiation from an inertial mirror horizon

The purpose of this study is to investigate radiation from asymptotic zero acceleration motion where a horizon is formed and subsequently detected by an outside witness. A perfectly reflecting moving mirror is used to model such a system and compute the energy and spectrum. The trajectory is asymptotically inertial (zero proper acceleration)-ensuring negative energy flux (NEF), yet approaches light-speed with a null ray horizon at a finite advanced time. We compute the spectrum and energy analytically.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 1 table; Accepted for publication in Universe; Selected Papers from the 17th Russian Gravitational Conference -International Conference on Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics (RUSGRAV-17

Response of nuclear-dissociating shocks to vorticity perturbations

In the context of core-collapse supernova explosions, the interaction of standing accretion shocks with upstream vorticity perturbations is investigated by linear theory analysis. The endothermic effect associated to the nuclear dissociation, which takes place right behind the shock wave, affects the amplitude of the perturbations amplified/generated across the front. For upstream disturbances whose characteristic size is much larger than the postshock dissociation layer thickness, the effect of nuclear dissociation can be reduced to that of considering the global endothermic effect that scales with the inflow energy flux. The present study focuses on perturbation fields that are not isotropic, which mimic the perturbations in collapsing convective shells of massive stars. The linear interaction of the shock with bidimensional mono-frequency vorticity perturbations is theoretically addressed, with the limit of highly stretched vortices being analyzed in detail. The exact spatial distribution of the rotational and acoustic perturbations generated in the postshock flow are provided along with the transient evolution of the shock front. It is found that nuclear dissociation contributes to stabilize the shock oscillations, but increases the amplitude of the density perturbations downstream.This work is supported by the Ministry of Science, MEC (ENE2015-65852-C2-1-R) and Fundación Iberdrola España (BINV-hBbhOeJQ), Spain (for C Huete), by MES RK state-targeted program BR05236454, MES RK grant No. 346, NU ORAU grant SST 2015021 and NU grant No. 090118FD5348 (for E Abdikamalov)

Measuring the Angular Momentum Distribution in Core-Collapse Supernova Progenitors with Gravitational Waves

The late collapse, core bounce, and the early postbounce phase of rotating core collapse leads to a characteristic gravitational wave (GW) signal. The precise shape of the signal is governed by the interplay of gravity, rotation, nuclear equation of state (EOS), and electron capture during collapse. We explore the dependence of the signal on total angular momentum and its distribution in the progenitor core by means of a large set of axisymmetric general-relativistic core collapse simulations in which we vary the initial angular momentum distribution in the core. Our simulations include a microphysical finite-temperature EOS, an approximate electron capture treatment during collapse, and a neutrino leakage scheme for the postbounce evolution. We find that the precise distribution of angular momentum is relevant only for very rapidly rotating cores with T/|W|>~8% at bounce. We construct a numerical template bank from our baseline set of simulations, and carry out additional simulations to generate trial waveforms for injection into simulated advanced LIGO noise at a fiducial galactic distance of 10 kpc. Using matched filtering, we show that for an optimally-oriented source and Gaussian noise, advanced Advanced LIGO could measure the total angular momentum to within ~20%, for rapidly rotating cores. For most waveforms, the nearest known degree of precollapse differential rotation is correctly inferred by both our matched filtering analysis and an alternative Bayesian model selection approach. We test our results for robustness against systematic uncertainties by injecting waveforms from simulations using a different EOS and and variations in the electron fraction in the inner core. The results of these tests show that these uncertainties significantly reduce the accuracy with which the total angular momentum and its precollapse distribution can be inferred from observations.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figure

The impact of vorticity waves on the shock dynamics in core-collapse supernovae

Convective perturbations arising from nuclear shell burning can play an important role in propelling neutrino-driven core-collapse supernova explosions. In this work, we analyse the impact of vorticity waves on the shock dynamics, and subsequently on the post-shock flow, using the solution of the linear hydrodynamics equations. As a result of the interaction with the shock wave, vorticity waves increase their kinetic energy, and a new set of entropic and acoustic waves is deposited in the post-shock region. These perturbations interact with the neutrino-driven turbulent convection that develops in that region. Although both vorticity and acoustic waves inject non-radial motion into the gain region, the contribution of the acoustic waves is found to be negligibly small in comparison to that of the vorticity waves. On the other hand, entropy waves become buoyant and trigger more convection. Using the concept of critical neutrino luminosity, we assess the impact of these modes on the explosion conditions. While the direct injection of non-radial motion reduces the critical neutrino luminosity by similar to 12 per cent for typical problem parameters, the buoyancy-driven convection triggered by entropy waves reduces the critical luminosity by similar to 17-24 per cent, which approximately agrees with the results of three-dimensional neutrino-hydrodynamics simulations. Finally, we discuss the limits of validity of the assumptions employed.This work is supported by the Ministry of Science, MEC (ENE2015-65852-C2-1-R) and Fundación Iberdrola España (BINV-ua37crdy), Spain (for CH), by ORAU grant at Nazarbayev University (for EA), by Max-Planck/Princeton Center (MPPC) for Plasma Physics (NSF PHY-1144374), and a Schmidt Fellowship (for DR)

Supernova seismology: gravitational wave signatures of rapidly rotating core collapse

Gravitational waves (GW) generated during a core-collapse supernova open a window into the heart of the explosion. At core bounce, progenitors with rapid core rotation rates exhibit a characteristic GW signal which can be used to constrain the properties of the core of the progenitor star. We investigate the dynamics of rapidly rotating core collapse, focusing on hydrodynamic waves generated by the core bounce, and the GW spectrum they produce. The centrifugal distortion of the rapidly rotating proto-neutron star (PNS) leads to the generation of axisymmetric quadrupolar oscillations within the PNS and surrounding envelope. Using linear perturbation theory, we estimate the frequencies, amplitudes, damping times, and GW spectra of the oscillations. Our analysis provides a qualitative explanation for several features of the GW spectrum and shows reasonable agreement with non-linear hydrodynamic simulations, although a few discrepancies due to non-linear/rotational effects are evident. The dominant early post-bounce GW signal is produced by the fundamental quadrupolar oscillation mode of the PNS, at a frequency 0.70 ≲ f ≲ 0.80 kHz, whose energy is largely trapped within the PNS and leaks out on a ∼10-ms time-scale. Quasi-radial oscillations are not trapped within the PNS and quickly propagate outwards until they steepen into shocks. Both the PNS structure and Coriolis/centrifugal forces have a strong impact on the GW spectrum, and a detection of the GW signal can therefore be used to constrain progenitor properties

Probing nuclear physics with supernova gravitational waves and machine learning

Core-collapse supernovae are sources of powerful gravitational waves (GWs). We assess the possibility of extracting information about the equation of state (EOS) of high density matter from the GW signal. We use the bounce and early post-bounce signals of rapidly rotating supernovae. A large set of GW signals is generated using general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations for various EOS models. The uncertainty in the electron capture rate is parametrized by generating signals for six different models. To classify EOSs based on the GW data, we train a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Even with the uncertainty in the electron capture rates, we find that the CNN models can classify the EOSs with an average accuracy of about 87 percent for a set of four distinct EOS models.Comment: Submitted to MNRA

Evaluation of pseudo-random number generation on GPU cards

Monte Carlo methods rely on sequences of random numbers to obtain solutions to many problems in science and engineering. In this work, we evaluate the performance of different pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) of the Curand library on a number of modern Nvidia GPU cards. As a numerical test, we generate pseudo-random number (PRN) sequences and obtain non-uniform distributions using the acceptance-rejection method. We consider GPU, CPU, and hybrid CPU/GPU implementations. For the GPU, we additionally consider two different implementations using the host and device application programming interfaces (API). We study how the performance depends on implementation parameters, including the number of threads per block and the number of blocks per streaming multiprocessor. To achieve the fastest performance, one has to minimize the time consumed by PRNG seed setup and state update. The duration of seed setup time increases with the number of threads, while PRNG state update decreases. Hence, the fastest performance is achieved by the optimal balance of these opposing effects