Estimating the core compactness of massive stars with Galactic supernova neutrinos

Abstract

We suggest the future detection of neutrinos from a Galactic core-collapse supernova can be used to infer the progenitor's inner mass density structure. We present the results from 20 axisymmetric core-collapse supernova simulations performed with progenitors spanning initial masses in the range 11--30Msun, and focus on their connections to the progenitor compactness. The compactness is a measure of the mass density profile of the progenitor core and recent investigations have suggested its salient connections to the outcomes of core collapse. Our simulations confirm a correlation between the neutrinos emitted during the accretion phase and the progenitor's compactness, and that the ratio of observed neutrino events during the first hundreds of milliseconds provides a promising handle on the progenitor's inner structure. Neutrino flavor mixing during the accretion phase remains a large source of uncertainty.

11 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in "Focus on microphysics in core-collapse supernovae: 30 years since SN1987A" issue of Journal of Physics G

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Impact of binary interactions on the diffuse supernova neutrino background
• Robust measurement of supernova ${\nu }_e$ spectra with future neutrino detectors