Investigation of Turbulence in the Early Stages of a High Resolution Supernova Simulation

Cosmologists have used the light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) as tools for surveying vast distances. Previous simulations have used coarse resolution and artificial initial conditions that substantially influenced their outcome. Here, we have the unique advantage of being able to import the results from previous simulations of convection leading to ignition from our low Mach number code, MAESTRO, directly into our compressible code, CASTRO. These initial conditions include the location of ignition and the turbulence on the grid. In this video, we show the turbulence within the early "bubble" of a supernova via renderings of the magnitude of the vorticity within the simulation. We then focus on the highest values of the magnitude of vorticity to observe the formation of "vortex tubes".