[Submitted on 3 Mar 2021] (cross-list from astro-ph.HE)
Neutrino Fast Flavor Conversions in Neutron-star Post-Merger Accretion Disks
Xinyu Li🇨🇦 · Daniel M. Siegel🇨🇦
A compact accretion disk may be formed in the merger of two neutron stars or of a neutron star and a stellar-mass black hole. Outflows from such accretion disks have been identified as a major site of rapid neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis and as the source of 'red' kilonova emission following the first observed neutron-star merger GW170817. We present long-term general-relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a typical post-merger accretion disk at initial accretion rates of over 400ms post-merger. We include neutrino radiation transport that accounts for effects of neutrino fast flavor conversions dynamically. We find ubiquitous flavor oscillations that result in a significantly more neutron-rich outflow, providing lanthanide and 3rd-peak r-process abundances similar to solar abundances. This provides strong evidence that post-merger accretion disks are a major production site of heavy r-process elements. A similar flavor effect may allow for increased lanthanide production in collapsars. The formalism presented here may also be used in simulations of core-collapse supernovae to explore whether fast conversions strengthen or weaken the explosion.
- Comments:
- 7 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in PRL
- Subjects:
- High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics — Phenomenology (hep-ph); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
- arXiv:
- 2103.02616 [pdf]