The current understanding of the mechanism of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), one of the most energetic events in the universe associated with the death of massive stars and the main formation channel of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes, is reviewed for broad readers from different disciplines of science who may not be familiar with the object. Therefore, we emphasize the physical aspects than the results of individual model simulations, although large-scale high-fidelity simulations have played the most important roles in the progress we have witnessed in the past few decades. It is now believed that neutrinos are the most important agent in producing the commonest type of CCSNe. The so-called neutrino-heating mechanism will be the focus of this review and its crucial ingredients in micro- and macrophysics and in numerics will be explained one by one. We will also try to elucidate the remaining issues.
Keywords: core collapse; hadronic equation of state; neutrinos; neutron stars; radiation transfer; supernovae.