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SUPERNOVA
EXPLOSION IN COLLAPSING CLOUD
Authors: Kasliwal
M.M., Lovelace R. V. E. and Houck
J.R.,
We analyze the
confining effect of cloud collapse on an expanding
supernova shock front. We solve the differential equation
for the forces on the shock front due to ram pressure,
supernova energy, and gravity. We find that the expansion
of the shock front is slowed and in fact reversed by
the collapsing cloud. Including radiative losses and a
potential time lag between supernova explosion and cloud
collapse shows that the expansion is reversed at smaller
distances, compared to the nonradiative case. We also
consider the case of multiple supernova explosions at the
center of a collapsing cloud. For instance, if we scale
our self-similar solution to a single supernova of energy
1051 ergs occurring when a cloud of initial
density 102 H cm-3 has collapsed by 50%, we
find that the shock front is confined to ~15 pc
in ~1 Myr. Our calculations are pertinent to the observed
unusually compact nonthermal radio emission in blue
compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs). More generally, we
demonstrate the potential of a collapsing cloud to confine
supernovae, thereby explaining how dwarf galaxies would
exist beyond their first generation of star formation.
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