Neutrino-driven Explosions

Understand

The question why and how core-collapse supernovae (SNe) explode is one of the central and most long-standing riddles of stellar astrophysics.

• A solution is crucial for deciphering the SN phenomenon, for predicting observable signals such as light curves and spectra, nucleosynthesis, neutrinos, and gravitational waves, for defining the role of SNe in the evolution of galaxies, and for explaining the birth conditions and properties of neutron stars (NSs) and stellar-mass black holes.
• Since the formation of such compact remnants releases over hundred times more energy in neutrinos than the SN in the explosion, neutrinos can be the decisive agents for powering the SN outburst.
• According to the standard paradigm of the neutrino-driven mechanism, the energy transfer by the intense neutrino flux to the medium behind the stagnating core-bounce shock, assisted by violent hydrodynamic mass motions (sometimes subsumed by the term "turbulence"), revives the outward shock motion and thus initiates the SN blast.