Presupernova neutrinos: realistic emissivities from stellar evolution

Understand

We present a new calculation of neutrino emissivities and energy spectra from a massive star going through the advanced stages of nuclear burning (presupernova) in the months before becoming a supernova.

• The contributions from beta decay and electron capture, pair annihilation, plasmon decay, and the photoneutrino process are modeled in detail, using updated tabulated nuclear rates.
• We also use realistic conditions of temperature, density, electron fraction and nuclear isotopic composition of the star from the state of the art stellar evolution code MESA.
• Results are presented for a set of progenitor stars with mass between 15 $M_\odot$ and 30 $M_\odot$.