Crucial Physical Dependencies of the Core-Collapse Supernova Mechanism

Abstract

We explore with self-consistent 2D FORNAXsimulations the dependence of theoutcome of collapse on many-body corrections to neutrino-nucleon cross sections, thenucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung rate, electron capture on heavy nuclei, pre-collapse seedperturbations, and inelastic neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering. Importantly,proximity to criticality amplifies the role of even small changes in the neutrino-matter cou-plings, and such changes can together add to produce outsized effects. When close to thecritical condition the cumulative result of a few small effects (including seeds) that individ-ually have only modest consequence can convert an anemic into a robust explosion, or evena dud into a blast. Such sensitivity is not seen in one dimension and may explain the apparentheterogeneity in the outcomes of detailed simulations performed internationally. A naturalconclusion is that the different groups collectively are closer to a realistic understanding ofthe mechanism of core-collapse supernovae than might have seemed apparent.