Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
Albert Einstein Institute | 2015 Nov 30
Enormous amounts of energy are released when a massive star, many times heavier than our Sun, collapses. Some stars explode in a hypernova - ten times more powerful than a normal supernova - and may emit a high-energy gamma-ray burst. Until now it was not clear how the extremely strong magnetic field needed for these processes is generated. A research team in the US, in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, now published an elaborate three-dimensional computer simulation, which sheds light on the relationship between hypernova, supernova, and gamma-ray bursts.Click to play embedded YouTube video.
The Caltech research team led by Dr. Philipp Mösta (now at the University of California at Berkely) simulated the collapse of a star of six solar masses. Initially a just few kilometers large proto-neutron star is formed on which stellar matter continues to accrete. The core of the star rotates faster on its surface than in its interior, and thus neighbouring plasma layers rub against each other, eventually setting the plasma into turbulent motion. This "magnetorotational instability" largely enhances the existing magnetic field. Such a scenario has been suggested earlier, however, it could only be understood by the computer simulations now published in the journal Nature. ...
Simulation Shows Key to Building Powerful Magnetic Fields
California Institute of Technology | 2015 Nov 30
Missing link between turbulence in collapsing star, hypernovae and gamma-ray bursts
University of California, Berkeley | 2015 Nov 30
A Large-Scale Dynamo and Magnetoturbulence in Rapidly Rotating Core-Collapse Supernovae - Philipp Mösta et al
- Nature (online 30 Nov 2015) DOI: 10.1038/nature15755