Speaker
Description
Massive stars end their lives as giant explosions. What starts as a collapse of the stellar core is turned into an explosion driven by energy transfer of neutrinos. The neutrino densities become so high that coherent flavor conversions develop.
I give an overview of the explosion mechanism and the importance of neutrinos. I will present a set of 76 simulations in axial symmetry initialized with 13 different progenitor systems with an initial mass between 9 and 23 solar masses. Neutrino flavor conversions have the potential to enhance, hinder, enable, and prevent the shock revival. I will show what are the conditions that make flavor conversions beneficial or disadvantageous for a successful explosion. Finally, I will highlight how the gravitational wave signal of a galactic core-collapse supernova could be used to constrain beyond standard model physics.