Mu and Tau Neutrino Thermalization and Production in Supernovae: Processes and Timescales

dc.creatorThompson, Todd A.
dc.creatorBurrows, Adam
dc.creatorHorvath, J. E.
dc.date2000-03-04
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T10:51:15Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T10:51:15Z
dc.descriptionWe investigate the rates of production and thermalization of $ν_μ$ and $ν_τ$ neutrinos at temperatures and densities relevant to core-collapse supernovae and protoneutron stars. Included are contributions from electron scattering, electron-positron annihilation, nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung, and nucleon scattering. For the scattering processes, in order to incorporate the full scattering kinematics at arbitrary degeneracy, the structure function formalism developed by Reddy et al. (1998) and Burrows and Sawyer (1998) is employed. Furthermore, we derive formulae for the total and differential rates of nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung for arbitrary nucleon degeneracy in asymmetric matter. We find that electron scattering dominates nucleon scattering as a thermalization process at low neutrino energies ($ε_ν\lesssim 10$ MeV), but that nucleon scattering is always faster than or comparable to electron scattering above $ε_ν\simeq10$ MeV. In addition, for $ρ\gtrsim 10^{13}$ g cm$^{-3}$, $T\lesssim14$ MeV, and neutrino energies $\lesssim60$ MeV, nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung always dominates electron-positron annihilation as a production mechanism for $ν_μ$ and $ν_τ$ neutrinos.
dc.description29 pages, LaTeX (RevTeX), 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. C. Also to be found at anonymous ftp site http://www.astrophysics.arizona.edu; cd to pub/thompson
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0003054
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0003054
dc.identifierPhys.Rev.C62:035802,2000
dc.identifierdoi:10.1103/PhysRevC.62.035802
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/184761
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.subjectHigh Energy Physics - Phenomenology
dc.subjectNuclear Theory
dc.titleMu and Tau Neutrino Thermalization and Production in Supernovae: Processes and Timescales
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