MULTIDIMENSIONAL MODELING OF TYPE I X-RAY BURSTS. II. TWO-DIMENSIONAL CONVECTION IN A MIXED H/He ACCRETOR

Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions of accreted material on the surface of neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries. Prior to the ignition of a subsonic burning front, runaway burning at the base of the accreted layer drives convection that mixes fuel and heavy-element ashes. In this paper, the second in a series, we explore the behavior of this low Mach number convection in mixed hydrogen/helium layers on the surface of a neutron star using two-dimensional simulations with the Maestro code. Maestro takes advantage of the highly subsonic flow field by filtering dynamically unimportant sound waves while retaining local compressibility effects, such as those due to stratification and energy release from nuclear reactions. In these preliminary calculations, we find that the rp-process approximate network creates a convective region that is split into two layers. While this splitting appears artificial due to the approximations of the network regarding nuclear flow out of the breakout reaction {sup 18}Ne(α, p){sup 21}Na, these calculations hint at further simplifications and improvements of the burning treatment for use in subsequent calculations in three dimensions for a future paper.