The Possibility of Emersion of the Outer Layers in a Massive Star Simultaneously with Iron-Core Collapse: A Hydrodynamic Model

Abstract

We analyze the behavior of the outer envelope in a massive star during and after the collapse of its iron core into a protoneutron star (PNS) in terms of the equations of one-dimensional spherically symmetric ideal hydrodynamics. The profiles obtained in the studies of the evolution of massive stars up to the final stages of their existence, immediately before a supernova explosion (Boyes et al. 1999), are used as the initial data for the distribution of thermodynamic quantities in the envelope.We use a complex equation of state for matter with allowances made for arbitrary electron degeneracy and relativity, the appearance of electron-positron pairs, the presence of radiation, and the possibility of iron nuclei dissociating into free nucleons and helium nuclei. We performed calculations with the help of a numerical scheme based on Godunov's method. These calculations allowed us to ascertain whether the emersion of the outer envelope in a massive star is possible through the following two mechanisms: first, the decrease in the gravitational mass of the central PNS through neutrino-signal emission and, second, the effect of hot nucleon bubbles, which are most likely formed in the PNS corona, on the envelope emersion. We show that the second mechanism is highly efficient in the range of acceptable masses of the nucleon bubbles ($\leq 0.01M_\odot$) simulated in our hydrodynamic calculations in a rough, spherically symmetric approximation.