Type Ia supernovae are among the brightest and most energetic events in the universe. They are important tools of cosmology. Lamb’s will perform large-scale simulations of Type Ia supernovae with the goal of better understanding these explosions, enabling astronomers to improve the accuracy with which the explosions can be calibrated as “standard candles".

The use of SNe Ia as “standard candles” showed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and it led to the discovery of dark energy. An accurate “standard candle” will improve the understanding of dark energy, one of the most compelling problems in the physical sciences. Improving the use of SNe Ia as “standard candles” will make them better cosmic yardsticks for determining the properties of dark energy. FLASH code and petascale computing will be used to perform higher fidelity simulations of Type Ia supernovae. These higher fidelity simulations will explore the effect of different values of the parameters that specify the initial conditions for the simulation.