Supernovae as thermal and kinetic energy input to their environment

Abstract

We present some results of numerical studies of supernova remnant (SNR) evolution in the context of supernova effects on galactic and globular cluster evolution. The characteristics of a SNR depend on the environment in which the explosion occurs. In particular, we show that parameters such as the density and the metallicity of the environment significantly influence the evolution of the remnant, and thus change its effects on the global environment (e.g., globular clusters, galaxies) as a source of thermal and kinetic energy. We conducted our studies using a one-dimensional, explicit Lagrangian hydrodynamics code with a tensor form of the artificial viscosity for treating shocks. We implemented ionization effects in the equation of state and a metallicity dependent cooling function. Global time-dependent quantities such as the total kinetic and thermal energies and the radial extent are calculated for a grid of models. Our results can easily be incorporated as input physics in the numerical modeling of galactic or globular cluster evolution. We present here selected results to illustrate their significance.