Coupling Neutrino Oscillations and Simulations of Core-Collapse Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper introduces the first self-consistent simulation of core-collapse supernovae that incorporates neutrino flavor transformation, revealing its effects on neutrino emission and heating but not on explosion success in spherical symmetry.

Contribution

It presents a novel hydrodynamic simulation including dynamic neutrino flavor transformation, a significant step forward in supernova modeling.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations affect emission and heating rates.

Flavor transformation alone does not trigger explosion in spherical symmetry.

Simultaneous evolution of neutrino oscillations and hydrodynamics is feasible.

Abstract

At the present time even the most sophisticated, multi-dimensional 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 proto-neutron 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 $M=20\;{\rm M_{\odot}}$ 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.