Flame Evolution During Type Ia Supernovae and the Deflagration Phase in the Gravitationally Confined Detonation Scenario

We develop an improved method for tracking the nuclear flame during the deflagration phase of a Type Ia supernova, and apply it to study the variation in outcomes expected from the gravitationally confined detonation (GCD) paradigm. A simplified 3-stage burning model and a non-static ash state are integrated with an artificially thickened advection-diffusion-reaction (ADR) flame front in order to provide an accurate but highly efficient representation of the energy release and electron capture in and after the unresolvable flame. We demonstrate that both our ADR and energy release methods do not generate significant acoustic noise, as has been a problem with previous ADR-based schemes. We proceed to model aspects of the deflagration, particularly the role of buoyancy of the hot ash, and find that our methods are reasonably well-behaved with respect to numerical resolution. We show that if a detonation occurs in material swept up by the material ejected by the first rising bubble but gravitationally confined to the white dwarf (WD) surface (the GCD paradigm), the density structure of the WD at detonation is systematically correlated with the distance of the deflagration ignition point from the center of the star. Coupled to a suitably stochastic ignition process, this correlation may provide a plausible explanation for the variety of nickel masses seen in Type Ia Supernovae.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

Finite-temperature reaction-rate formula: Finite volume system, detailed balance, T→0T \to 0 limit, and cutting rules

A complete derivation, from first principles, of the reaction-rate formula for a generic process taking place in a heat bath of finite volume is given. It is shown that the formula involves no finite-volume correction. Through perturbative diagrammatic analysis of the resultant formula, the detailed-balance formula is derived. The zero-temperature limit of the formula is discussed. Thermal cutting rules, which are introduced in previous work, are compared with those introduced by other authors.Comment: 35pages (text) plus 4pages (figures

Energy and pressure densities of a hot quark-gluon plasma

We calculate the energy and hydrostatic pressure densities of a hot quark-gluon plasma in thermal equilibrium through diagrammatic analyses of the statistical average, $\langle \Theta_{\mu \nu} \rangle$, of the energy-momentum-tensor operator $\Theta_{\mu \nu}$. To leading order at high temperature, the energy density of the long wave length modes is consistently extracted by applying the hard-thermal-loop resummation scheme to the operator-inserted no-leg thermal amplitudes $\langle \Theta_{\mu \nu} \rangle$. We find that, for the long wave length gluons, the energy density, being positive, is tremendously enhanced as compared to the noninteracting case, while, for the quarks, no noticeable deviation from the noninteracting case is found.Comment: 33 pages. Figures are not include