Three-dimensional models of massive stars and supernova explosions

This project investigates the final stages in the lives of massive stars. Massive stars go through a sequence of nuclear burning stages and eventually develop an onion shell structure with an iron core at the centre and several shell of lighter elements further outside. Once the iron core becomes massive enough, the core collapses either to a neutron star or to a black hole, and in most cases the envelope of the star is ejected in a gigantic supernova explosion. Such explosions are primarily responsible for producing many of the heavy elements - such as oxygen and silicon - that form the building blocks of planets like our own. Such explosions are now detected in great abundance by large-scale astronomical surveys, and they are also coveted targets for neutrino and gravitational wave detectors.

This data set comprises three-dimensional simulations of the convective burning processes during the final stages before the collapse and explosion, as well as simulations of the supernova explosions themselves. Several models for different stellar parameters and physical assumptions (e.g. with and without magnetic fields) have been calculated. The raw data for a complete model amount to several terabytes. Solutions to facilitate access to raw and curated reduced data are currently under construction.