2025/11/26 by T. Dasher, Dasher, T., A. Ravlić +7
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Nuclear physics research studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.21567
openalex publication_date 2025/11/26 · openalex created_date 2025/11/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Nuclear weak-interaction rates are known to exert a prominent effect in the late-stages of stellar collapse. Despite their importance, most studies to date on core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) have focused primarily on the effects of electron captures, neglecting β~decay contributions. In this work, we present the first CCSNe simulation incorporating global β~decay rates from a microscopic theory. These are enabled by a large-scale evaluation of both electron capture and β~decay rates, obtained self-consistently utilizing the relativistic energy density functional theory and finite-temperature quasiparticle random-phase approximation. Including β decay leads to a dramatic enhancement of the pre-bounce antineutrino signal as the antineutrino emissivity increases by more than two orders of magnitude and the luminosity by a factor of 50 relative to thermal emission alone, while the average antineutrino energy increases by over 1 MeV. It is expected that these new rates could help us constrain the model uncertainties related to weak-interaction processes, improving the prediction of antineutrino signal during the final stages of stellar death.