John M. Blondin et al. 2003 ApJ 584 971 doi:10.1086/345812
John M. Blondin1, Anthony Mezzacappa2 and Christine DeMarino1
Show affiliationsWe 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 nonspherical shock. We discuss the ramifications this instability may have for the supernova mechanism.
accretion, accretion disks; hydrodynamics; shock waves; supernovae: general; turbulence
Issue 2 (2003 February 20)
Received 2002 July 18, accepted for publication 2002 October 29
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