The Centurion – Halite experiment demonstrated the feasibility of igniting a deuterium – tritium micro-explosion with an energy of not more than a few megajoule, and the Mike test the feasibility of a pure deuterium explosion with an energy of more than 10 6 megajoule. In both cases the ignition energy was supplied by a fission bomb explosive. While an energy of a few megajoule, to be released ...

The discovery of nearly coherent brightness oscillations during thermonuclear X-ray bursts from six neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries has opened up a new way to study the propagation of thermonuclear burning and may ultimately lead to greater understanding of thermonuclear propagation in other astrophysical contexts, such as in Type Ia supernovae. Here, we report detailed analyses of the D58...

In this paper we present a numerical model for a Type Ia su pernova explosion Our method is based on explicit tracking of the ame front which is critically important to the accurate modeling of turbulent thermonuclear combustion

Observations of thermonuclear (also called Type I) X-ray bursts from neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have revealed large amplitude, high coherence X-ray brightness oscillations with frequencies in the 300 600 Hz range. Substantial spectral and timing evidence point to rotational modulation of the X-ray burst flux as the cause of these ...

We analyse Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) Proportional Counter Array (PCA) data of a double-peaked burst from the low mass X-ray binary (LMXB) 4U 1636–536 that shows no evidence for photospheric radius expansion (PRE). We find that the X-ray emitting area on the star increases with time as the burst progresses, even though the photosphere does not expand. We argue that this is a strong indi...

Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are generally believed to be the result of the thermonuclear disruption of Chandrasekhar-mass carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, mainly because such thermonuclear explosions can account for the right amount of Ni, which is needed to explain the light curves and the late-time spectra, and the abundances of intermediate-mass nuclei which dominate the spectra near maximum light...