Charged-current muonic reactions in core-collapse supernovae

Gang Guo,Tobias Fischer,A Lohs,Gabriel Martínez-Pinedo

doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.023037

Abstract

The steady advance in core-collapse supernova simulations requires a more precise description of neutrino processes in hot and dense matter. In this work, we study the rates of charged-current (CC) weak processes with (anti)muons in supernova matter. At the relativistic mean field level, we derive results for the rates of CC neutrino-nucleon reactions, taking into account full kinematics, weak magnetism and pseudoscalar terms, and $q^2$-dependent nucleon form factors in the hadronic current. In addition to muonic semileptonic processes we also consider purely leptonic processes. In particular, we show that inverse muon decay can dominate the opacities for low energy $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar\nu_e$ at densities $\gtrsim 10^{13}~\rm{g~ cm^{-3}}$.

Highlights

The core-collapse of a massive star leads to the formation of a neutron star and the subsequent supernova explosion
We firstly show the consistency between the opacities of
We take the profiles from a 2D simulation [34,59] for a nonrotating 20 M⊙ progenitor star [60] based on the Lattimer-Swesty equation of state (EOS) (LS200) [55], where the relevant muonic reactions have been implemented

Summary

Introduction

The core-collapse of a massive star leads to the formation of a neutron star and the subsequent supernova explosion. Neutrino processes in hot and dense nuclear medium play crucial roles in many aspects of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), in particular for the explosion mechanism and the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements [2,3,4,5]. Neutrino processes in hot and dense matter have been well studied in the literature [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], and their impacts on CCSN simulations have been extensively explored Due to a larger rest mass, the production of μÆ was thought to be highly suppressed and their role in SN dynamics was traditionally ignored

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Results

Conclusion