Results in Nature: Discovery of the first plausible explanation for a pulsar's spin
The flow vectors highlight two strong rotational flows. On the right the flow
is moving clockwise along with the shock pattern, whereas at the bottom left the
post-shock flow is being diverted into a narrow stream moving anticlockwise, fueling
the accretion of angular momentum onto the PNS.
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Researchers John M. Blondin of North Carolina State University and Anthony Mezzacappa of Oak Ridge National Laboratory explain results from the Terascale Supernova Initiatve (Alumni SciDAC project: Shedding New Light on Exploding Stars) in the January 4, 2007 issue of Nature (Letters).
They report a robust instability of the stalled accretion shock in core-collapse supernovae that is able to generate a strong rotational flow in the vicinity of
the accreting proto-neutron star (PNS). This explanation of pulsar spin is the first to match observations by astronomers.
Read the nature article (pdf) The results are based on 3-D simulations run on the Leadership Computing Facility Cray X1E at ORNL. This research team has been awarded
7,300,000 processor-hours from the 2007 INCITE program.
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