Speaker: Rolf Walder

Institut fur Astronomie, ETH-Zentrum (Swiss)

"New Developments In Core-Collapse Supernovae Simulations"

In a first part I give an overview of the state of the art supernova
theory, which shall provide elementary insights to the non-specialists
and recalls the basic questions. The overview provides the basic
observational facts, theoretical ideas on what actually sets the
explosion and lightcurve scale, discusses 3 ideas on the explosion
mechanism in some detail, and reviews the significant computational
difficulties.

In the second part, I present new results from the first truly
multi-dimensional neutrino-hydrodynamical simulations. We provide a
new set of testable predictions, from neutron star masses, rotation
rates and kick velocities, to asymmetric neutrino signals, and
gravitational waveforms. I then discuss new ideas on the importance
of neutrino-driven winds from the proto-neutron star. These winds
accelerate up to 25 percent of the speed of light and carry in several
seconds approximately 0.5 percent of a solar mass. They may play a
significant role in setting the explosion energy scale and may provide
conditions for r-process nucleosynthesis. Finally, I will outline
future perspectives of the field and give a short review of a new
generation of computational tools which will allow to study supernova
theory in much more detail and will allow to make comparisons to
observations on a quantitative level for the first time.