The Neutrino Signal From Pair Instability Supernovae

Abstract

A very massive star with a carbon-oxygen core in the range of $64$ M${}_{\odot }<M_{\mathrm{CO}}<133$ M${}_{\odot }$ is expected to undergo a very different kind of explosion known as a pair instability supernova. Pair instability supernovae are candidates for superluminous supernovae due to the prodigious amounts of radioactive elements they create. While the basic mechanism for the explosion is understood, how a star reaches a state is not, thus observations of a nearby pair-instability supernova would allow us to test current models of stellar evolution at the extreme of stellar masses. Much will be sought within the electromagnetic radiation we detect from such a supernova but we should not forget that the neutrinos from a pair-instability supernova contain unique signatures of the event that unambiguously identify this type of explosion. We calculate the expected neutrino flux at Earth from two, one-dimensional pair-instability supernova simulations which bracket the mass range of stars which explode by this mechanism taking into account the full time and energy dependence of the neutrino emission and the flavor evolution through the outer layers of the star. We calculate the neutrino signals in five different detectors chosen to represent present or near future designs. We find the more massive progenitors explode as pair-instability supernova which can easily be detected in multiple different neutrino detectors at the `standard' supernova distance of $10\mathrm{kpc}$ producing several events in DUNE, JUNE and SuperKamiokande, while the lightest progenitors only produce a handful of events (if any) in the same detectors. The proposed HyperKamiokande detector would detect neutrinos from a large pair-instability supernova as far as $\sim 50\mathrm{kpc}$ allowing it to reach the Megallanic Clouds and the several very high mass stars known to exist there.

Added a second PISN model plus numerous smaller improvements. Accepted by Phys Rev D

References in corpus (18)

• An eclipsing binary distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2 per cent
• Simulation of Coherent Non-Linear Neutrino Flavor Transformation in the Supernova Environment I: Correlated Neutrino Trajectories
• The most massive stars in the Arches cluster
• The Destruction of Cosmological Minihalos by Primordial Supernovae
• Super-luminous supernovae at redshifts of 2.05 and 3.90
• Pair creation supernovae at low and high redshift
• Uncovering the Chemical Signature of the First Stars in the Universe
• The very massive binary NGC3603-A1
• Fast evolving pair-instability supernova models: evolution, explosion, light curves
• Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe
• Possible pair-instability supernovae at solar metallicity from magnetic stellar progenitors
• Explosion and nucleosynthesis of low redshift pair instability supernovae
• Early-type stars in the young open cluster IC1805. II. The probably single stars HD15570 and HD15629, and the massive binary/triple system HD15558
• Pair-Instability Supernova Simulations: Progenitor Evolution, Explosion, and Light Curves
• Probing thermonuclear supernova explosions with neutrinos
• Imaging the Cool Hypergiant NML Cygni's Dusty Circumstellar Envelope with Adaptive Optics
• 3D radiative transfer simulations of Eta Carinae's inner colliding winds - I. Ionization structure of helium at apastron
• Mass-loss rates of Very Massive Stars

Cited by in corpus (3)

• SNEWS 2.0: A Next-Generation SuperNova Early Warning System for Multi-messenger Astronomy
• Pulsational Pair-instability Supernovae. II. Neutrino Signals from Pulsations and their Detection by Terrestrial Neutrino Detectors
• The neutrino emission from thermal processes in very massive stars in the local universe