Hypercritical accretion phase and neutrino expectation in the evolution of Cassiopeia A

TL;DR

This paper models the hypercritical accretion phase in Cassiopeia A's supernova remnant, predicting neutrino signals detectable by Hyper-Kamiokande to verify this rare event's occurrence.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical simulation of neutrino cooling during hypercritical accretion in Cassiopeia A, providing testable predictions for neutrino detection.

Findings

Estimated 3195 neutrino events at Hyper-Kamiokande

Predicted neutrino flavor ratios considering plasma effects

First trustworthy method to verify hypercritical accretion in supernova remnants

Abstract

Cassiopeia A the youngest supernova remnant known in the Milky Way is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky and a unique laboratory for supernova physics. Although its compact remnant was discovered in 1999 by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, nowadays it is widely accepted that a neutron star lies in the center of this supernova remnant. In addition, new observations suggest that such neutron star with a low magnetic field and evidence of a carbon atmosphere could have suffered a hypercritical accretion phase seconds after the explosion. Considering this hypercritical accretion episode, we compute the neutrino cooling effect, the number of events and neutrino flavor ratios expected on Hyper-Kamiokande Experiment. The neutrino cooling effect (the emissivity and luminosity of neutrinos) is obtained through numerical simulations performed in a customized version of the FLASH code. Based on these simulations, we forecast that the number of events expected on the Hyper-Kamiokande Experiment is around 3195. Similarly, we estimate the neutrino flavor ratios to be detected considering the neutrino effective potential due to the thermal and magnetized plasma and thanks to the envelope of the star. It is worth noting that our estimates correspond to the only trustworthy method for verifying the hypercritical phase and although this episode took place 330 years ago, at present supernova remnants with these similarities might occur thus confirming our predictions for this phase.