3D test DD SN Ia calculation run on Frontier. This shows the energy generation rate (blue and purple) and temperature (orange) at 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 s. We see The He detonation starting at the North pole and wrapping around the star by the middle image. In the last image, the He layer has mostly stopped burning but has become very hot and puffed up.
This project builds upon the success of earlier INCITE awards that explored astrophysical thermonuclear explosions, in particular, Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) and x-ray bursts (XRBs). The team is using their Castro code to carry out high performance, robust, and accurate simulations to advance our understanding of XRBs and SN Ia, as well as related physics (thermonuclear combustion and detonations).
In the area of XRBs, the researchers are expanding their work to model thermonuclear flame propagation across the surface of a neutron star. They are exploring larger reaction networks and the effect of magnetic fields, and push to model a larger fraction of the neutron star surface. For their SN Ia studies, the team is focusing on the double-detonation model. Both XRBs and SN Ia are multiscale, multiphysics problems that rely on the interplay between reactions and hydrodynamics. The team’s open-source Castro code has a new time integration that is designed to strongly couple these processes, enabling the team to carry out accurate and efficient simulations of reacting flows.
