Lepton-driven convection in supernovae

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Abstract
It is argued that collapsing stellar cores are likely to develop lepton inversion zones in which the number of leptons per baryon decreases with increasing radius. Such zones tend to be unstable to convection. The resulting convective transport of energy and lepton number should have significant effects on the generation of supernova explosions. Expressions are presented for a multicomponent version of the local mixing length model of convection which can describe the convection of several quantities such as energy and various types of neutrinos. The essential features of convection in a lepton inversion zone are describable in terms of a two-component model of convection in which the transport of energy and electron type electron number are explicitly treated. This thermo-lepton convection is studied and numerical estimates appropriate to existing supernova calculations are given.

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