Crucial Physical Dependencies of the Core-Collapse Supernova Mechanism

Understand

We explore with self-consistent 2D F{\sc{ornax}} simulations the dependence of the outcome of collapse on many-body corrections to neutrino-nucleon cross sections, the nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung rate, electron capture on heavy nuclei, pre-collapse seed perturbations, and inelastic neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering.

• Importantly, proximity to criticality amplifies the role of even small changes in the neutrino-matter couplings, and such changes can together add to produce outsized effects.
• When close to the critical condition the cumulative result of a few small effects (including seeds) that individually have only modest consequence can convert an anemic into a robust explosion, or even a dud into a blast.
• Such sensitivity is not seen in one dimension and may explain the apparent heterogeneity in the outcomes of detailed simulations performed internationally.