THE IMPACT OF PROGENITOR ASYMMETRIES ON THE NEUTRINO-DRIVEN CONVECTION IN CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE

Abstract

The explosion of massive stars in core-collapse supernovae may be aided by the con vective instabilities that develop in their innermost nuclear burning shells. The re sulting fluctuations support the explosion by generating additional turbulence behind the supernova shock. It was suggested that the buoyant density perturbations aris ing 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 tur bulence. 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.