2002/10/29 by John M. Blondin, Anthony Mezzacappa, Christine DeMarino · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/345812
published as Astrophys.J. 584 (2003) 971-980 · 21 pages, 13 figures; to be published in The Astrophysical Journal
arxiv created 2002/10/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We examine the stability of standing, spherical accretion shocks. Accretion shocks arise in core collapse supernovae (the focus of this paper), star formation, and accreting white dwarfs and neutron stars. We present a simple analytic model and use time-dependent hydrodynamics simulations to show that this solution is stable to radial perturbations. In two dimensions we show that small perturbations to a spherical shock front can lead to rapid growth of turbulence behind the shock, driven by the injection of vorticity from the now non-spherical shock. We discuss the ramifications this instability may have for the supernova mechanism.