Nuclear neutrino energy spectra in high temperature astrophysical environments

Understand

Astrophysical environments that reach temperatures greater than $\sim$ 100 keV can have significant neutrino energy loss via both plasma processes and nuclear weak interactions.

• We find that nuclear processes likely produce the highest-energy neutrinos.
• Among the important weak nuclear interactions are both charged current channels (electron capture/emission and positron capture/emission) and neutral current channels (de-excitation of nuclei via neutrino pair emission).
• We show that in order to make a realistic prediction of the nuclear neutrino spectrum, one must take nuclear structure into account; in some cases, the most important transitions may involve excited states, possibly in both parent and daughter nuclei.