How high energy fluxes may affect Rayleigh\u2013Taylor instability growth in young supernova remnants

Carolyn Kuranz ,D Shvarts,H.-S Park,C M Huntington,T Plewa,F W Doss,B A Remington,H F Robey,E Giraldez,G Malamud,Matthew Trantham ,Sallee Klein ,Michael Grosskopf ,D.c Marion ,Timothy Handy ,S A Maclaren ,J L Kline ,R J Wallace ,Eric Harding ,Kumar Raman ,C Krauland ,Shon Prisbrey ,A R Miles,A Shimony,Kirk Flippo ,Weigang Wan ,D H Kalantar ,R P Drake

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03548-7

Abstract

Energy-transport effects can alter the structure that develops as a supernova evolves into a supernova remnant. The Rayleigh–Taylor instability is thought to produce structure at the interface between the stellar ejecta and the circumstellar matter, based on simple models and hydrodynamic simulations. Here we report experimental results from the National Ignition Facility to explore how large energy fluxes, which are present in supernovae, affect this structure. We observed a reduction in Rayleigh–Taylor growth. In analyzing the comparison with supernova SN1993J, a Type II supernova, we found that the energy fluxes produced by heat conduction appear to be larger than the radiative energy fluxes, and large enough to have dramatic consequences. No reported astrophysical simulations have included radiation and heat conduction self-consistently in modeling supernova remnants and these dynamics should be noted in the understanding of young supernova remnants.

Highlights

Energy-transport effects can alter the structure that develops as a supernova evolves into a supernova remnant
When a blast wave emerges from an exploding star, it drives a forward shock into the circumstellar medium (CSM) and a reverse shock forms in the expanding stellar ejecta, creating a young supernova remnant (SNR)
When the CSM is dense enough, as in the case of SN1993J where the ejecta density has a steep density gradient compared with other Type II supernovae, the hot shocked matter can produce significant radiative fluxes that affect the emission from the SNR and potentially alter the behavior of the RT2

Summary

Introduction

Energy-transport effects can alter the structure that develops as a supernova evolves into a supernova remnant. When the CSM is dense enough, as in the case of SN1993J where the ejecta density has a steep density gradient compared with other Type II supernovae, the hot shocked matter can produce significant radiative fluxes that affect the emission from the SNR and potentially alter the behavior of the RT2. For a typical electron temperature in the shocked CSM of just above 109 K, will sustain a temperature in the ejecta of about 2.5 × 107 K This is substantially larger than the temperature (~ 4 × 106 K) produced by the reverse shock in the standard models without heat conduction and will help resist the density increase that radiative cooling of the shocked ejecta would otherwise produce. The characteristic speed for this process is the sound speed, which we estimate as 700 km s−1 at 0.1 years

Methods

Results

Conclusion