Coupling neutrino oscillations and simulations of core-collapse supernovae

At the present time even the most sophisticated, multidimensional simulations of core-collapse supernovae do not (self-consistently) include neutrino flavor transformation. This physics is missing despite the importance of neutrinos in the core-collapse explosion paradigm. Because of this dependence, any flavor transformation that occurs in the region between the protoneutron star and the shock could result in major effects upon the dynamics of the explosion. We present the first hydrodynamic core-collapse supernova simulation which simultaneously includes flavor transformation of the free-streaming neutrinos in the neutrino transport. These oscillation calculations are dynamically updated and evolve self-consistently alongside the hydrodynamics. Using a $M=20M_{\odot }$ progenitor, we find that while the oscillations have an effect on the neutrino emission and the heating rates, flavor transformation alone does not lead to a successful explosion of this progenitor in spherical symmetry.

Figure 1

The luminosity (top), mean energy (center), and pinch parameter (bottom) for all four neutrino flavors as calculated at infinity. The results including oscillations (solid) are compared with the simulation with no oscillations (dot-dashed).

Figure 2

Top: the net specific heating rate integrated over the gain region for both simulations. The bright lines show a time-averaged value of the instantaneous specific heating rate (faded lines) over 10 ms. Bottom: the ratio of average integrated specific heating with oscillations compared to the standard case with no oscillation.

Figure 3

Top: the shock (solid) and proto-neutron star (dashed) radius for simulations with oscillations (orange) and with no oscillations (navy). Bottom: the difference in PNS and shock radius between the two simulations, taken as $\mathrm{\Delta }R=r_{\mathrm{osc}.}-r_{\text{no osc}}$.