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W.R. Hix (UTenn/ORNL), A. Mezzacappa (ORNL), M. Liebendoerfer, O.E.B. Messer (UTenn/ORNL), J.M. Blondin (NC State), S.W. Bruenn (FAU)
Decades of research on the mechanism which causes core collapse supernovae has evolved a paradigm wherein the shock that results from the formation of the proto-neutron star stalls, failing to produce an explosion. Only when the shock is re-energized by the tremendous neutrino flux that is carrying off the binding energy of this proto-neutron star can it drive off the star's envelope, creating a supernova. Work in recent years has demonstrated the importance of multi-dimensional hydrodynamic effects like convection to successful simulation of an explosion. Further work has established the necessity of accurately characterizing the distribution of neutrinos in energy and direction. This requires discretizing the neutrino distribution into multiple groups, adding greatly to the computational cost. However, no supernova simulations to date have combined self-consistent multi-group neutrino transport with multi-dimensional hydrodynamics. We present preliminary results of our efforts to combine these important facets of the supernova mechanism by coupling self-consistent ray-by-ray multi-group Boltzmann and flux-limited diffusion neutrino transport schemes to multi-dimensional hydrodynamics. This research is supported by NASA under contract NAG5-8405, by the NSF under contract AST-9877130, and under a SciDAC grant from the DoE Office of Science High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program. Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.