Neutrino emission from binary neutron star mergers: characterizing light curves and mean energies

Understand

Neutrinos are copiously emitted by neutron star mergers, due to the high temperatures reached by dense matter during the merger and its aftermath.

• Neutrinos influence the merger dynamics and shape the properties of the ejecta, including the resulting $r$-process nucleosynthesis and kilonova emission.
• In this work, we analyze neutrino emission from a large sample of merger radiation hydrodynamics simulations in Numerical Relativity, covering a broad range of initial masses, nuclear equation of state and viscosity treatments.
• We extract neutrino luminosities and mean energies, and compute quantities of interest such as the peak values, peak broadnesses, time averages and decrease time scales.