The Cosmic Stellar Birth and Death Rates

Abstract

The cosmic stellar birth rate can be measured by standard astronomical techniques. It can also be probed via the cosmic stellar death rate, though until recently, this was much less precise. However, recent results based on measured supernova rates, and importantly, also on the attendant diffuse fluxes of neutrinos and gamma rays, have become competitive, and a concordant history of stellar birth and death is emerging. The neutrino flux from all past core-collapse supernovae, while faint, is realistically within reach of detection in Super-Kamiokande, and a useful limit has already been set. I will discuss predictions for this flux, the prospects for neutrino detection, the implications for understanding core-collapse supernovae, and a new limit on the contribution of type-Ia supernovae to the diffuse gamma-ray background.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in New Astronomy Reviews (invited talk at "Astronomy with Radioactivities V", Clemson Univ., Sept. 2005). 9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• The GALEX-VVDS Measurement of the Evolution of the Far-Ultraviolet Luminosity Density and the Cosmic Star Formation Rate
• The Concordance Cosmic Star Formation Rate: Implications from and for the Supernova Neutrino and Gamma Ray Backgrounds
• Constraints on the Star Formation Rate from Supernova Relic Neutrino Observations
• The Diffuse Gamma-Ray Background from Supernovae
• The diffuse supernova neutrino flux, supernova rate and SN1987A
• Unified 1-D Simulations of Gamma-Ray Line Emission from Type Ia Supernovae
• The Supernova Relic Neutrino Backgrounds at KamLAND and Super-Kamiokande
• Direct Measurement of Supernova Neutrino Emission Parameters with a Gadolinium-Enhanced Super-Kamiokande Detector
• Angular Correlations of the MeV Cosmic Gamma Ray Background
• The star formation history of damped Lyman alpha absorbers
• Neutrino Signatures from the First Stars