Convective Properties of Rotating Two-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernova Progenitors

Abstract: We explore the effects of rotation on convective carbon, oxygen, and silicon shell burning during the late stages of evolution in a 20Msun star. Using the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) we construct 1D stellar models both with no rotation and with an initial rigid rotation of 50% of critical. At different points during the evolution, we map the 1D models into 2D and follow the multidimensional evolution using the FLASH compressible hydrodynamics code for many convective turnover times until a quasi-steady state is reached. We characterize the strength and scale of convective motions via decomposition of the momentum density into vector spherical harmonics. We find that rotation influences the total power in solenoidal modes, with a slightly larger impact for carbon and oxygen shell burning than for silicon shell burning. Including rotation in one-dimensional (1D) stellar evolution models alters the structure of the star in a manner that has a significant impact on the character of multidimensional convection. Adding modest amounts of rotation to a stellar model that ignores rotation during the evolutionary stage, however, has little impact on the character of resulting convection. Since the spatial scale and strength of convection present at the point of core collapse directly influence the supernova mechanism, our results suggest that rotation could play an important role in setting the stage for massive stellar explosions.