Aspects of Neutrino Production in Supernovae

Abstract

I discuss neutrino production in supernovae (SNe) and the detection of both Galactic core collapse events and the diffuse extra-galactic MeV neutrino background expected from the integrated history of star formation. In particular, I consider what processes might affect our expectations for both. I focus on ``rapid'' rotation, defined as leading to millisecond initial neutron star spin periods. Rotation affects the neutrino luminosity, the average neutrino energy, the duration of the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling epoch, and the ratios of luminosities and average energies between neutrino species; it can strongly suppresses the anti-electron as well as mu, anti-mu, tau, and anti-tau neutrino fluxes relative to those for the electron neutrinos. As a result, depending on the prevalence of rapid rotation in SN progenitors through cosmic time, this may affect predictions for the MeV neutrino background and the history of nucleosynthetic enrichment. I emphasize connections between the MeV neutrino background and tracers of the star formation rate density at high redshift in other neutrino and photon wavebands.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures, proceedings for the International Workshop on the Energy Budget in the High Energy Universe, Kashiwa campus, Univ. of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan, Feb. 2006