
Full text loading...
Because calibrated light curves of type Ia supernovae have become a major
tool to determine the local expansion rate of the universe and also its
geometrical structure, considerable attention has been given to models of these
events over the past couple of years. There are good reasons to believe that
perhaps most type Ia supernovae are the explosions of white dwarfs that have
approached the Chandrasekhar mass,
,
and are disrupted by thermonuclear fusion of carbon and oxygen. However, the
mechanism whereby such accreting carbon-oxygen white dwarfs explode continues
to be uncertain. Recent progress in modeling type Ia supernovae as well as
several of the still open questions are addressed in this review. Although the
main emphasis is on studies of the explosion mechanism itself and on the
related physical processes, including the physics of turbulent nuclear
combustion in degenerate stars, we also discuss observational constraints.
Article metrics loading...
Full text loading...
Data & Media loading...