The effect of the pre-detonation stellar internal velocity profile on the nucleosynthetic yields in type Ia supernova

Abstract

A common model of the explosion mechanism of Type Ia supernovae is based on a delayed detonation of a white dwarf. A variety of models differ primarily in the method by which the deflagration leads to a detonation. A common feature of the models, however, is that all of them involve the propagation of the detonation through a white dwarf that is either expanding or contracting, where the stellar internal velocity profile depends on both time and space. In this work, we investigate the effects of the pre-detonation stellar internal velocity profile and the post-detonation velocity of expansion on the production of α-particle nuclei, including 56Ni, which are the primary nuclei produced by the detonation wave. We perform one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the explosion phase of the white dwarf for center and off-center detonations with five different stellar velocity profiles at the onset of the detonation. In order to follow the complex flows and to calculate the nucleosynthetic yields, approximately 10,000 tracer particles were added to every simulation. We observe two distinct post-detonation expansion phases: rarefaction and bulk expansion. Almost all the burning to 56Ni occurs only in the rarefaction phase, and its expansion timescale is influenced by pre-existing flow structure in the star, in particular by the pre-detonation stellar velocity profile. We find that the mass fractions of the α-particle nuclei, including 56Ni, are tight functions of the empirical physical parameter ρup/vdown, where ρup is the mass density immediately upstream of the detonation wave front and v down is the velocity of the flow immediately downstream of the detonation wave front. We also find that vdown depends on the pre-detonation flow velocity. We conclude that the properties of the pre-existing flow, in particular the internal stellar velocity profile, influence the final isotopic composition of burned matter produced by the detonation. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.