Abstract
Thermonuclear supernovae (Type Ia SNe) are believed to result from the complete disruption of a near-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf (WD) by explosive thermonuclear runaway. Their use as cosmological distance indicators as well as comprehension of their role in galactic chemical evolution ultimately depends on a reliable and robust understanding of the explosion mechanism. We have undertaken a study of turbulent thermonuclear combustion in these events, focusing on the effects of increased physical fidelity in simulations, through improved resolution and increased dimensionality. We begin with a series of detonation simulations at low WD densities that we will use for baseline metrics against which subsequent simulations will be measured. We have performed these simulations using a version of the FLASH code[1]. We show progress on a set of simulations in one, two, and three spatial dimensions designed to explore the impact of dimensionality on the evolution of the detonations, and thereby clearly delineate the role of the nuclear kinetics. By performing a suite of simulations incorporating an alpha network at several levels of maximum mesh refinement, we will be able to quantify the effects of resolution and network size on future results.
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