The Force Explosion Condition Accurately Predicts Explodability of Core-Collapse Supernova Simulations

At the end of their lives, most massive stars undergo core collapse. Some stars explode as a core-collapse supernova (CCSN) explosion leaving behind neutron stars (NS) while others fail to explode and collapse to stellar-mass black holes (BH). One of the major challenges in CCSN theory is to predict which stars explode and which fizzle. We develop an analytic force explosion condition (FEC) for spherical explosions. The FEC is L_ντ_g-0.06κ > 0.38 and depends upon two dimensionless parameters only: 1. the dimensionless neutrino heating deposited in the gain region: L_ντ_g = L_ντ_gR_NS/(GṀM_NS) and 2. the dimensionless neutrino opacity κ = κṀ/√(GM_NSR_NS) that parameterizes the neutrino optical depth in the accreted matter near the neutron-star surface. We test and validate the FEC using one dimensional light-bulb simulations as well as one-dimensional simulations with realistic neutrino transport. In addition to being an accurate explosion condition for spherical simulations, the FEC also promises to be a useful diagnostic to measure a “distance” to explosion. These successes suggests that the FEC has potential to be an accurate diagnostic for multi-dimensional simulations as well. We will present progress in validating the FEC with multi-dimensional simulations.