Rutgers University Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

The death of massive stars in extraordinary explosions known as core collapse supernovae is directly or indirectly responsible for the origin of the lion’s share of the elements in the periodic table. Nearly sixty years of effort have been devoted to dissecting the central engine that drives such explosions, into its key elements, and to illuminating a key step since the Big Bang that led to our cosmic origin. Core collapse supernovae are multiphysics phenomena that challenge our best theories, computational approaches, and supercomputers. General relativistic neutrino radiation magnetohydrodynamics, state of the art weak interaction physics, and state of the art descriptions of the nuclear physics of high-density, neutron-rich matter present in the stellar cores of exploding massive stars, must all be brought together to construct a realistic core collapse supernova model. As daunting as this sounds, significant progress has been made, and progress is accelerating. I will discuss what has been done and what we now know. I will then discuss what challenges lie ahead to arrive at definitive models able to predict successfully the outcome of any core collapse supernova we may observe. In the hopefully not too distant future, our theoretical efforts will be greatly assisted by multimessenger astronomy – specifically, the observation of photons, neutrinos, and gravitational waves from the next Galactic core collapse supernova. Gravitational waves, in particular, as well as neutrinos, will bring us information from the very heart of the explosion. Given the theoretical progress made, especially in the past decade, and the promise of multimessenger observations, we live in very exciting times for core collapse supernova science. I hope to share this excitement with you.