Pre-supernova neutrino emissions from ONe cores in the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae: are they distinguishable from those of Fe cores?

TL;DR

This study calculates and compares pre-supernova neutrino emissions from ONe and Fe core progenitors, suggesting potential detectability differences that could help identify the core composition of collapsing stars.

Contribution

It provides detailed neutrino luminosity and spectral predictions for ONe and Fe core progenitors, highlighting their distinguishable features and detection prospects.

Findings

ONe cores emit less total neutrino energy than Fe cores.

Average neutrino energy from ONe cores is twice that of Fe cores.

Detection of pre-supernova neutrinos could differentiate progenitor types within 1 kpc.

Abstract

Aiming to distinguish two types of progenitors of core collapse supernovae, i.e., one with a core composed mainly of oxygen and neon (abbreviated as ONe core) and the other with an iron core (or Fe core), we calculated the luminosities and spectra of neutrinos emitted from these cores prior to gravitational collapse, taking neutrino oscillation into account. We found that the total energies emitted as $\bar{\nu}_e$ from the ONe core are $\lesssim 10^{46}\ {\rm erg}$, which is much smaller than $\sim 10^{47}\ {\rm erg}$ for Fe cores. The average energy, on the other hand, is twice as large for the ONe core as those for the Fe cores. The neutrinos produced by the plasmon decays in the ONe core are more numerous than those from the electron-positron annihilation in both cores but they have much lower average energies $\lesssim 1\ {\rm MeV}$. Although it is difficult to detect the pre-supernova neutrinos from the ONe core even if it is located within 200$\ $pc from the earth, we expect $ \sim 9 - 43$ and $\sim 7 - 61$ events for Fe cores at KamLAND and Super-Kamiokande, respectively, depending on the progenitor mass and neutrino-mass hierarchy. These numbers might be increased by an order of magnitude if we envisage next-generation detectors such as JUNO. We will hence be able to distinguish the two types of progenitors by the detection or non-detection of the pre-supernova neutrinos if they are close enough ($\lesssim1\ {\rm kpc}$).