The non-linear onset of neutrino-driven convection in two- and three-dimensional core-collapse supernovae

A toy model of the post-shock region of core-collapse supernovae is used to study the non-linear development of turbulent motions driven by convection in the presence of advection. Our numerical simulations indicate that buoyant perturbations of density are able to trigger self-sustained convection only when the instability is not linearly stabilized by advection. Large amplitude perturbations produced by strong shock oscillations or combustion inhomogeneities before the collapse of the progenitor are efficiently shredded through phase mixing and generate a turbulent cascade. Our model enables us to investigate several physical arguments that had been proposed to explain the impact of the dimensionality on the onset of explosions in global simulations of core-collapse supernovae. Three-dimensional (3D) simulations are found to lead to higher entropy values than two-dimensional (2D) ones. We attribute this to greater turbulent mixing and dissipation of the kinetic energy into heat in 3D. Our results show that the increase of entropy is enhanced with finer numerical resolution and larger perturbation amplitude.