Nucleosynthesis Calculations from Core-Collapse Supernovae

Abstract

We review some of the uncertainties in calculating nucleosynthetic yields, focusing on the explosion mechanism. Current yield calculations tend to either use a piston, energy injection, or enhancement of neutrino opacities to drive an explosion. We show that the energy injection, or more accurately, an entropy injection mechanism is best-suited to mimic our current understanding of the convection-enhanced supernova engine. The enhanced neutrino-opacity technique is in qualitative disagreement with simulations of core-collapse supernovae and will likely produce errors in the yields. But piston-driven explosions are the most discrepant. Piston-driven explosion severely underestimate the amount of fallback, leading to order-of-magnitude errors in the yields of heavy elements. To obtain yields accurate to the factor of a few level, we must use entropy or energy injection and this has become the NuGrid collaboration approach.

Citation

(2008, July). Nucleosynthesis Calculations from Core-Collapse Supernovae. Presented at 10th Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos, Mackinac Island, Michigan, USA

• Conference Name: 10th Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos
• Start Date: Jul 27, 2008
• End Date: Aug 1, 2008
• Publication Date: Nov 28, 2008
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/404369
• Publisher URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.4648v1