Impacts of collective neutrino oscillations on core-collapse supernova explosions

Abstract

By performing a series of one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) hydrodynamic simulations with spectral neutrino transport, we study possible impacts of collective neutrino oscillations on the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae. To model the spectral swapping, which is one of the possible outcome of the collective neutrino oscillations, we parameterize the onset time when the spectral swap begins, the radius where the spectral swap occurs, and the threshold energy above which the spectral interchange between heavy-lepton neutrinos and electron/anti-electron neutrinos takes place. By doing so, we systematically study how the neutrino heating enhanced by the spectral swapping could affect the shock evolution as well as the matter ejection. We also investigate the progenitor dependence using a suite of progenitor models (13, 15, 20, and 25 M ). We find that there is a critical heating rate induced by the spectral swapping that triggers explosions, and which significantly differs between the progenitors. The critical heating rate is generally smaller for 2D than for 1D due to the multidimensionality that enhances the neutrino heating efficiency. For the progenitors employed in this paper, the final remnant masses are estimated to range between 1.1-1.5 M . For our 2D model of the 15 M progenitor, we find a set of oscillation parameters that could account for strong supernova explosions (1051erg), simultaneously leaving behind a remnant mass close to 1.4 M. © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.