Institute for Advanced Study/Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

The mechanism of the explosion of massive stars remains uncertain. I willdiscuss aspects of the critical condition for explosion, the observedsupernova diversity, and the connection to gamma-ray bursts andsuper-luminous supernovae. I will focus on the first few seconds afterexplosion, during the "proto-neutron star" cooling epoch, when a winddriven by neutrino heating emerges from the cooling neutron star into theoverlying massive stellar progenitor, powering the explosion. I willdescribe the physics of proto-neutron star winds, their heavy elementnucleosynthesis, and our new work in assessing the role of rotation andmagnetic fields in powering GRBs and energetic supernovae, and ingenerating the r-process nuclei.