Impacts of Collective Neutrino Oscillations on Supernova Explosions

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamic simulations to explore how collective neutrino oscillations influence supernova explosion mechanisms, revealing conditions under which spectral swapping enhances shock revival and affects remnant masses.

Contribution

It introduces a parametrized model of spectral swapping in neutrino oscillations and systematically analyzes its impact on supernova dynamics across multiple progenitor models.

Findings

Spectral swapping can trigger supernova explosions under certain conditions.

Multidimensional effects lower the critical heating rate needed for explosion.

Remnant masses are estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.5 solar masses.

Abstract

By performing a series of one- and two-dimensional (1-, 2D) hydrodynamic simulations with spectral neutrino transport, we study possible impacts of collective neutrino oscillations on the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae. To model the spectral swapping which is one of the possible outcome of the collective neutrino oscillations, we parametrize the onset time when the spectral swap begins, the radius where the spectral swap occurs, and the threshold energy above which the spectral interchange between heavy-lepton neutrinos and electron/anti-electron neutrinos takes place, respectively. By doing so, we systematically study how the neutrino heating enhanced by the spectral swapping could affect the shock evolution as well as the matter ejection. We also investigate the progenitor dependence using a suite of progenitor models (13, 15, 20, and 25 $M_\odot$). We find that there is a critical heating rate induced by the spectral swapping to trigger explosions, which significantly differs between the progenitors. The critical heating rate is generally smaller for 2D than 1D due to the multidimensionality that enhances the neutrino heating efficiency. For the progenitors employed in this paper, the final remnant masses are estimated to range in 1.1-1.5$M_\odot$. For our 2D model of the $15M_\odot$ progenitor, we find a set of the oscillation parameters that could account for strong supernova explosions ($\sim 10^{51}$ erg), simultaneously leaving behind the remnant mass close to $\sim 1.4 M_\odot$.