Laboratory astrophysics
P. Keiter, P-24

August 4, TA-35, Bld 86, room 205

Recent observations of core collapse supernovae provide increasing evidence that supernova explosions are intrinsically asymmetric. An explosion model based on the assumption that bipolar, non-relativistic jets form during core collapse predicts an efficient ejection of a highly asymmetric supernova envelope and helps in understanding many of the observations (Khokhlov, et. al. ApJ 524, L107, 1999). Since the complex numerical hydrodynamic astrophysical simulations of these jets require validation, we have designed a series of hydrodynamically-scaled jet experiments on the Omega laser at the University of Rochester.