Sterile neutrino oscillations in core-collapse supernovae

Abstract

We have made core-collapse supernova simulations that allow oscillations between electron neutrinos (or their antiparticles) with right-handed sterile neutrinos. We have considered a range of mixing angles and sterile neutrino masses including those consistent with sterile neutrinos as a dark matter candidate. We examine whether such oscillations can impact the core bounce and shock reheating in supernovae. We identify the optimum ranges of mixing angles and masses that can dramatically enhance the supernova explosion by efficiently transporting electron antineutrinos from the core to behind the shock, where they provide additional heating leading to much larger explosion kinetic energies. We show that this effect can cause stars to explode that otherwise would have collapsed. We find that an interesting periodicity in the neutrino luminosity develops due to a cycle of depletion of the neutrino density by conversion to sterile neutrinos that shuts off the conversion, followed by a replenished neutrino density as neutrinos transport through the core.

Light sterile neutrinos

“…in solar [15, 87, 106, 109, 167, 200-202, 366, 367], long-baseline [84-86, 368, 369], and atmospheric [83,166,[208][209][210][370][371][372][373][374][375] neutrino experiments) in astrophysics (e.g. in supernova neutrino experiments [169,[376][377][378][379][380][381][382][383] and indirect dark matter detection [384]), high-energy cosmic neutrinos [257,385,386], and in cosmology (see Section 6). We think that this is a great opportunity which stimulates the great interest in the search for light sterile neutrinos.…”

Sterile neutrino dark matter and core-collapse supernovae

“…20,21 This ensures that all electron neutrinos of the given flavor with the resonance energy E res will oscillate to sterile neutrinos, and vice versa. 23,24 It is probable that incoherent, scattering-induced oscillations will be significant in the high matter densities of the central core, but this will not be a dominant effect and will be left to future work.…”

Impact of sterile neutrino dark matter on core-collapse supernovae

“…In Ref. [25] it was found that enhanced explosion energies could occur for a broad range of masses and mixing angles. Even spherical models that do not explode could be made to explode by the presence of mixing to sterile neutrinos.…”

“…[25] a large region of the sterile neutrino parameter space was considered that varied over several orders of magnitude in mass and mixing angle. It was concluded that much of the parameter space led to efficient neutrino reheating and resulted in successful explosions.…”

“…[25] coherent active-sterile neutrino oscillations were studied using the University of Notre Dame-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (UND/LLNL) code, 21, 32 a spherically symmetric relativistic hydrodynamic supernova model with flux limited multi-group neutrino transport. Sterile neutrinos with masses and mixing angles consistent with dark matter constraints and their impact on shock reheating were studied.…”