Thermonuclear supernovae: A multi-scale astrophysical problem challenging numerical simulations and visualization

Abstract

The numerical modeling of type Ia supernovae is a demanding astrophysical task. Relevant physical processes take place on vastly different length- and timescales. This multi-scale character of the object poses challenges to the numerical approaches. We discuss an implementation that accounts for these problems by employing a large eddy simulation (LES) strategy for treating turbulence effects and a level-set technique to represent the thin thermonuclear flames. It is demonstrated that this approach works efficiently in simulations of the deflagration model and the delayed detonation model of type Ia supernovae. The resulting data reflect the multi-scale nature of the problem. Therefore, visualization has to be tackled with special techniques. We describe an approach that enables the interactive exploration of large datasets on commodity hardware. To this end, out-of-core methods are employed and the rendering of the data is achieved by a hybrid particle-based and texture-based volume-rendering technique. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.