2024/09/21 by E. Waxman, Waxman, E., T. Wasserman +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.14233
openalex publication_date 2024/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Growing observational evidence suggests that enhanced mass loss from the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) is common during ∼1 yr preceding the explosion, creating an optically thick circum-stellar medium (CSM) shell at ∼1014.5 cm radii. We show that if such mass loss is indeed common, then the breakout of the SN shock through the dense CSM shell produces a neutrino flux that may account for a significant fraction of the observed \gtrsim10 TeV neutrino background. The neutrinos are created within a few days from the explosion, during and shortly after the shock breakout, which produces also large UV (and later X-ray) luminosity. The compact size and large UV luminosity imply a pair production optical depth of ∼104 for >100 GeV photons, naturally accounting for the lack of a high-energy gamma-ray background accompanying the neutrino background. SNe producing >1 neutrino event in a 1 km2 detector are expected at a rate of \lesssim0.1/yr. A quantitative theory describing the evolution of the electromagnetic spectrum during a breakout, as the radiation-mediated shock is transformed into a collisionless one, is required to enable (i) using data from upcoming surveys that will systematically detect large numbers of young, <1 d old SNe, to determine the pre-explosion mass loss history of the SN progenitor population, and (ii) a quantitative determination of the neutrino luminosity and spectrum.