Standing accretion shock instability in the collapse of a rotating stellar core

Abstract

Hydrodynamical instabilities, such as the standing accretion shock instability (SASI), play an essential role in the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae, with observable imprints in the neutrino and gravitational wave signals. Yet, the impact of stellar rotation on the development of SASI is poorly explored. We investigate the conditions favoring the growth of SASI in the presence of rotation through a perturbative analysis. The properties of SASI are compared in two stationary configurations, cylindrical and spherical equatorial, which mainly differ by their advection timescales from the shock to the proto-neutron star surface. Without rotation, the mode $m=1$, corresponding to a one-armed spiral SASI deformation, can be significantly more unstable in the spherical equatorial configuration. In fact, the shorter advection time in the spherical equatorial geometry allows for a larger contribution of the entropic-acoustic coupling from the region of adiabatic compression near the surface of the proto-neutron star. The angular momentum of the collapsing core favors the growth of prograde spiral modes $m=1$ and $m=2$ in both geometries. Although the growth rate of the spiral instability is systematically faster in spherical geometry, its oscillation frequency is remarkably insensitive to the geometry. Such a contrast with nonrotating flows calls for a deeper understanding of the role of advection in the mechanism of spiral SASI. Our findings suggest that the resonant coupling of acoustic waves with their corotation radius may play a major role in the instability mechanism of collapsing cores with rotation. Elucidating this physical mechanism is essential to interpret the signal from future multimessenger supernova observations.