Graduate Student

Ke-Jung (Ken) Chen

Astrophysics, University of Minnesota, 2007-Present, USA

School of Physics & Astronomy

116 Church Street S.E. Minneapolis, MN, 55455

352 Tate, 624-2327, email kchen @ physics.umn.edu

Research Description:

I am working with Prof. Alexander Heger on "Multi-Dimensional Simulations of Pair-Instability Supernovae". The main tool for my numerical simulations is the SciDAC CASTRO code. I collaborate Ann Almgrem at LBNL and Candace Joggerst at LANL/UCSC on development of CASTRO and implementation of new physics. I am using local computers, computing resources at MSI, and as part of SciDAC, I will be using some of the world's largest supercomputers for my numerical simulations. I also work on visualization tools to analyze my results.

While simulations of most other types of supernovae have been done extensively, no such multi-dimensional simulations of pair instability supernovae exist; these will be the first simulations of this kind. I want to understand the energetics and nucleosynthesis of these supernovae, for the first time including multi-dimensional effects that properly simulate hydrodynamic instabilities and mixing. I will also include, for the first time, rotation in these simulations.

PISNs Movies and Pictures :