On the importance of progenitor asymmetry to shock revival in core-collapse supernovae

Abstract

The progenitor stars of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) are asymmetrically fluctuating due to turbulent convections in the late stages of their lives. The progenitor asymmetry at the pre-supernova stage has recently caught the attention as a new ingredient to facilitate shock revival in the delayed neutrino-heating mechanism. In this paper, we investigate the importance of the progenitor asymmetries to shock revival with a semi-analytical approach. Free parameters were chosen such that the time evolution of shock radii and mass accretion rates are compatible with the results of detailed numerical simulations of CCSNe in spherical symmetry. We first estimate the amplitude of asymmetries required for the shock revival by the impulsive change of pre-shock flows in the context of neutrino heating mechanism, and then convert the amplitude to the corresponding amplitude in the pre-supernova phase by taking into account the growth of asymmetries during infall. We apply our model to various types of progenitors and find that the requisite amplitude of pre-supernova asymmetry is roughly three times larger than the prediction by current stellar evolution models unless other additional physical ingredients such as multi-dimensional fluid instabilities and turbulent convections in post-shock flows aid shock revival. We thus conclude that progenitor asymmetries can not trigger the shock revival by the impulsive way but rather play a supplementary role in reality.