Non-thermal neutrinos from supernovae leaving a magnetar

TL;DR

This paper predicts a detectable burst of high-energy neutrinos from supernovae with magnetar progenitors, offering a new way to study supernova mechanisms and magnetic fields through neutrino observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model where supernova shock acceleration in magnetar progenitors produces high-energy neutrinos, linking magnetic fields to neutrino signals.

Findings

High-energy neutrino flashes up to 100 GeV are produced hours after thermal neutrinos.

Super-Kamiokande could detect around 160 muon events from a Galactic supernova.

IceCube could observe approximately 7000 muon events from such supernovae.

Abstract

Under the fossil field hypothesis of the origin of magnetar magnetic fields, the magnetar inherits its magnetic field from its progenitor. We show that during the supernova of such a progenitor, protons may be accelerated to \sim 10^4 GeV as the supernova shock propagates in the magnetic stellar envelope. Inelastic nuclear collisions of these protons produce a flash of high-energy neutrinos arriving a few hours after thermal (10 MeV) neutrinos. The neutrino flash is characterized by energies up to O(100) GeV and durations seconds to hours, depending on the progenitor: those from smaller Type Ibc progenitors are typically shorter in duration and reach higher energies compared to those from larger Type II progenitors. A Galactic Type Ib supernova leaving behind a magnetar remnant will yield up to \sim 160 neutrino induced muon events in Super-Kamiokande, and up to \sim 7000 in a km^3 class detector such as IceCube, providing a means of probing supernova models and the presence of strong magnetic fields in the stellar envelope.