Type Ia Supernovae: Simulations and Nucleosynthesis

E. F. Brown, A. C. Calder, T. Plewa, P. M. Ricker, K. Robinson, J. B. Gallagher

Published 2005-05-19Version 1

We present our first nucleosynthesis results from a numerical simulation of the thermonuclear disruption of a static cold Chandrasekhar-mass C/O white dwarf. The two-dimensional simulation was performed with an adaptive-mesh Eulerian hydrodynamics code, FLASH, that uses as a flame capturing scheme the evolution of a passive scaler. To compute the isotopic yields and their velocity distribution, 10,000 massless tracer particles are embedded in the star. The particles are advected along streamlines and provide a Lagrangian description of the explosion. We briefly describe our verification tests and preliminary results from post-processing the particle trajectories with a modest (214 isotopes) reaction network.